MICHAEL SURTEES

I was going through U-Haul’s website today and came across a nice, informative and slightly humorous way to make selecting moving pod boxes less boring. The language they use makes the process of figuring out the number of moving pods actually helpful and places the person in the context of their situation. I kind of wish it was site wide though. When I went to check out a van, I had the option buying some boxes. There was no way to indicate how many boxes I might need depending on the moving situation. Pods and boxes are different but a similar tool would have been helpful.

The I Heart Etsy iPad app from Gesture Theory has had some modest success so far with the number of downloads. It’s not a cash cow but the consistency is nothing to blink at if it stays the same for the year. The feedback has been positive from the Etsy community with helpful suggestions on how it can be improved upon.

The most fascinating thing that was slightly unexpected was watching the live Google Analytics with the page views per minute. People were hitting Etsy with the app at over 100 page views per minute. People were literally going through 2 pages per second. I’ve never seen anything like that before. That kind of smooth browsing is not available with any experience except an app. The mobile web that takes the device into consideration is a must now. There’s no reason why a site can’t be responsive depending on the screen (as long as the timeline is willing as is the budget). But for pure speed of trying to find something, if the UI is designed in such a way, apps, especially on the iPad will enable viewable content with speed in a way that has not been seen before.

I’m really happy to mention that Gesture Theory launched the I Heart Etsy iPad app. It was really exciting to see how we could build a product like this internally. If you’re a fan of Etsy and have an iPad, this makes the discovery process really fast. We’ve also added some fun ways for a person to heart a product or section.

He’re our description in the iTunes store:

*** Optimized for iPad Retina ***

I Heart Etsy was designed especially for Etsy lovers. It provides an ideal browsing experience and seamlessly integrates with your Etsy profile to make your shopping experience fun, easy, and addicting.

♥ Easily view item details, favorite items, bookmark categories and add items to your cart.

♥ Find that perfect item by searching on keyword, price, and location from your favorite categories.

♥ Browse the hottest treasuries and get great gift and craft ideas.

♥ Share favorite products with friends through Facebook and Email. Coming soon, Twitter and Pinterest!

♥ Beautiful retina display images and graphics for the best browsing experience.

—————

We value your feedback and appreciate your support. Please email us at iheartetsy@gesturetheory.com if you have any issues.

Or find us on twitter @IHeartEtsyApp

Note: The term ‘Etsy’ is a trademark of Etsy, Inc. This app uses the Etsy API but is not endorsed by Etsy, Inc.

NYC is big and unique enough that it’s hard for me to say there’s one city street that is my favourite. I really like walking down Elizabeth early on a Saturday morning. The contrasting nuances between that street with Bowery and Canal are a plenty. I also like Thompson. It’s kind of cozy with the smaller shops and what feels like low hanging trees in the summer. A couple months ago I started switching up my walking to work paths. One day Thompson, the next Sullivan st. Over time I’d test out the different coffee shops for my early morning fix. My hands down favourite is Local. Easily the most consistently friendly people helping behind the counter and the fresh baking early in the morning is awesome. When I walk home it’s almost always a hundred percent going through Sullivan st. It has a different feel with all the shops and cafe’s with people, but not really crowded with tourists so it’s a fast walk to Washington Square Park.

Getting my coffee this morning at Local I couldn’t help but notice the large bench set out in front of it. As I was looking at it, it struck me suddenly that there’s a lot of public outdoor seating on Sullivan st. Walking a couple blocks between Houston and Spring st on Sullivan, here’s some of the great seats to take a moment to pause. There’s still more to shoot during the day when some of the other business open up, but these give a pretty good representation of why Sullivan st is my favourite street.

Over at Gesture Theory we’re testing out a couple fonts for a project. Being someone that really enjoys the craft of typography I thought it was a great opportunity to put the three typefaces that are in consideration against each other. The other day I tweeted about diehards. Curious to see how it read on a different scale I’m using it for the text comparison. Below is a bit more information about each typeface from the foundries.

About Guardian from Commercial Type (PDF): A large family intended for editorial design and situations requiring complex typographic hierarchy, Guardian was designed for Mark Porter’s groundbreaking 2005 redesign of The Guardian. As a text face it exhibits a rational and clear disposition, lending a serious air to the text, while the display components capture a wide range of moods with their comprehensive range of weights.

About Yoga Mobile Pro from Font Shop (PDF): The Yoga family is a type system conceived to work for newspapers and magazines thanks to its strong personality and good legibility. The Serif weights with their sturdy serifs are a good choice for body text, but they also serve as an original headline face with their subtly chiseled counters inspired by blackletters. FF Yoga mixes the harshness of blacklettes with the balanced rhythm and round shapes of the Garalde typefaces. Yoga Sans is a contemporary alternative to Gill Sans and a sober companion to Yoga Serif.

About Tisa Mobile Pro from Font Shop (PDF): Slovenian designer Mitija Miklav i drew FF Tisa to meet the technological and aesthetic requirements of modern magazine use. His primary goal was to develop a softer, more dynamic version of a nineteenth-century slab serif wood type. A large x-height and pronounced serifs make FF Tisa extremely legible in text sizes; its unique design details, including slightly exaggerated ink traps and a fairly upright italic, are evident in display applications. The typeface was selected by the TDC judges for a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design in 2007.

The USB cable is the best thing to happen to watches since the removable strap. I’ve had my ups and downs with the Nike+ GPS watch. Great concept but poorly executed. Awful typeface, gps worked sometimes and the site that showed my data was pretty limited. What it did show me was that a watch didn’t need a normal battery. I just had to connect it to my USB port on my air to charge it.

The new pebble is about to kickstart something that is long overdue. It does not rely on old battery power, it can talk with the most used devices in the world and it gives an opportunity to improve dialog between the device in a persons pocket and available action on their wrist. There’s opportunities there that no one else has opened up yet. I’m petty excited about what will be contributed. Thinking back I cant recall saying that about anything I’ve paid for before.

This is why I love and will wear this Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android

It started simply enough. I had seen the above tweet which made me laugh but also reminded me of something that a friend had told me back when they were visiting NYC from Vancouver. They had been visiting they’re friend who had mentioned that MUJI was owned by Walmart. I have no idea how they got on the topic and I don’t really remember why they told me. Either way it definitely stuck with me.

So, because of the craziness of Facebook and Instagram the above tweet was apt for the day. Remembering remnants of the conversation about MUJI I wanted to reply but wanted to at least back up my claim. I did end up finding this Wikipedia page mentioning that Walmart did indeed own the company that owned MUJI.

So with that info I tweeted back what I saw and had heard. Well a lot of other people noticed and retweeted it. I have no idea how many people went to the Wikipedia page or not to confirm what they read. To two people’s credit they did mention that it was a false claim siting Ryohin-Keikaku history page on their site and their stock info.

My response whether correct or not was based on the Seiyu Groups Wikipedia page that I had originally cited. I woke up this morning and noticed a small revision to the Wikipedia page.

It’s pretty flimsy to trust Wikipedia either way but for the time being I’ll trust that the Seiyu Group page is indeed corrected. An obvious lesson is to never trust Wikipedia in the first place but I think that does a disservice to all the correct info that is there. I can’t really blame Twitter for creating a service that allows for really efficient communication. If I was designing a new Twitter from the ground up though, I would maybe allow for a way to communicate a revised tweet to all those that retweeted the original tweet with an asterisk that pointed to how the first tweet came to be.

Coming across the diagram above, the first thing that made me take notice was the idea of trajectory of accident opportunity. I immediately read it as something positive. Basically I thought it was a way to discover unknown opportunities. Then I did a search on what Latent errors and systems disasters meant. Apparently I read the diagram pretty incorrectly. Words like Chernobyl and Titanic were inferred. So I thought why not change the diagram to what I initially thought it was. Below I flipped the diagram vertically to what I think the environment for accidental opportunities could be. Keep in mind that I spent about five minutes on it so things still need to be fleshed out. The basic takeaway is that to get a new idea off the ground, observation and instinct need to power through challenges based on popular assumption.

I rarely end up where I was intended to go, but often I end up somewhere that I need to be.

—Douglas Adams

WIRED: An Essay on the New Aesthetic By Bruce Sterling

So the New Aesthetic is really a design-fiction, it’s a postulated creative position. By metaphorically pretending that machines are our friends, we can see what they ‘see,’ and think what they ‘think’… We do get a payoff for that effort. We achieve creative results that we would not have gotten without that robot disguise.

The only thing better as a designer than seeing someone use the thing that a designer designed is going through a frustrating first time experience. It offers the opportunity to learn a lot. Case in point: I was trying to get a simple headphone amplifier to work on my MacBook Air. I just wanted to clean up the sound that I was listening to. The headphone amp was delivered and I couldn’t get the thing to work. The power signal was on but when I tried plugging in cable after cable things didn’t work. I have tons of cables, it’s embarrassing actually. (if anyone knows where to recycle this stuff please let me know) because I don’t need them anymore.

To make a long story short it took way too much time to get my sound to work. As the photos above document I went through stuff that should have worked once I plugged in my first cable. The audio settings for Mac OS X should work first time.

The sketching ipad app Paper by FiftyThree seemed to come out of nowhere with a vengeance Thursday morning on the interwebs. The app is free to download with one brush but costs a couple dollars to buy the entire toolkit of brushes. I spent the $8 bucks with no regrets.

Comparing it to Sketchbook Pro which I can create multiple layers was something that I thought originally was going to be a deal breaker. In Sketchbook Pro I can build a quick sketch with a number of layers to add different back ground colors. As it turns out after I spent some time working with the Paper app I’m not sure it’s such a big deal. Adding additional layers would be nice but I managed pretty well on one plane. What is frustrating is that new colors can’t be added and there isn’t a way to save an image to photos. I had to email myself the image to do that.

In terms of the Paper being an app for sketching, I found them a bit looser to use than Sketchbook Pro which in turn made it easier and faster to use. The killer feature is the paintbrush tool for watercolor. It’s much livelier than the airbrush tool in Sketchbook.

When I first noted how I was trying to evolve my sketching system with my new iPad I commented that it was still faster to whiteboard or use my MUJI notebook than with Sketchbook Pro. I don’t think that’s the case with Paper. The tools and system make it really easy by not giving many options in regards to opacity and size. I’ll have to give both apps a couple days before I can definitively say which will be the best option for me. With that said ill be spending a couple more hours with Paper which was something that I didn’t do when I first bought sketchbook.

BLOG MAVERICK: Dont Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort

Everyone has a passion, everyone has a finite amount of time. This post talks about how using time will indicate where it will lead a person.

DESIGN STAFF: Story-centered design: Hacking your brain to think like a user

Good comparison of how a lot of designer’s design within a small focus when the reality of designing a system means looking at the bigger picture. There’s a couple observations on how to accomplish that process

WSJ: Lululemon’s Secret Sauce

Fascinating insight into how Lulu Lemon gathers user feedback with simple observations, how that is translated locally in the store and how that information funnels to the organization.

KEVIN MD: Why doctors aren’t prescribing health apps to patients

I’ve always wondered why there aren’t more apps out there for the health industry backed by doctors. Now I know why there’s a lot of hurdles that most people haven’t considered and why more apps won’t be in the app store anytime soon.

CREATIVE APPLICATIONS: Designing Programs

While there are a couple common themes that each of the designer’s talk about creating their own code to design with, each group (or person) is approaching a unique problem. For some it’s about creating images, for others there’s a need to display something that otherwise wouldn’t be possible using default tools.

FAST COMPANY: “Boy CEO” Mark Zuckerberg’s Two Smartest Projects Were Growing Facebook And Growing Up

There wasn’t much new in this article but I find it helpful whenever this is mentioned in my own process. “Can we take what used to take 10 clicks for someone to get the information they need and reduce it to three?”

ARCHINECT: Pinterest Co-Founder Evan Sharp

Who would have guessed that a couple architects were behind Pinterest? In this interview with one of the founders he talks about iteration and how some designer’s miss out on the big picture.

GIGAOM: Zynga’s CEO on leadership, startups & mobile gaming

This interview isn’t very long but gives insight into the up’s and downs of creating something with others.

HACKER NEWS: Open-plan offices must die

Interesting POV’s on the need to have space to focus on work without being in the center of things.

It has now been over a week since I’ve been using the new iPad. While my habits of use will be evolving as I find out what I’m comfortable using the device for, I figured a week gave me enough time to observe how I used the iPad and what I liked and didn’t like about it. Initially I had a problem with the weight of the new one. I have the first iPad and the second one as well. Back in the day I wasn’t so concerned about the weight. Even after a week with the new iPad I still don’t like the weight of it. The reason that the weight is an issue for me is not so much because the iPad 2 was 200g while the new one is 250g. It’s because I’m used to reading retina with my super light iPhone 4S. It’s not a fair comparison of course but something that shouldn’t be ignored either. There’s no solution for the weight issue but I wanted to bring it up anyways.

This isn’t so much a review of the new iPad as it is a collection of notes about evolutions and changes in my behavior with what I do with both my new iPad and iPhone 4S now that they both have retina screens. The first observation is that I see the two devices more as one connected system than ever before. I think this has to do with the screen parity. I’ll write something on my iPhone and push it to my iPad. I might sketch something on my iPad and send it my iPhone. I’m starting to use Apple’s cloud with photos which I didn’t really before. This is reducing the number of times I email an image to myself.

LTE is amazingly fast. With all things being equal now, I might read more on my iPhone because of the lightness of it. On the flip side if I need something fast I’m going to use my iPad to view it. LTE makes me happy. The speed of that connection can’t really be compared with any wifi network that I’ve used. I’m lucky in that I have an unlimited data plan that I purchase back when I had the iPad 1. The speed has been cut in half since I started using it which sucks on ATT’s part but was somewhat expected. With that said it’s still faster than my wifi.

My writing workflow is changing. I’m using the iA Writer app for my iphone to compose blog posts. I never used to do this. I’m also using it to get initial thoughts down about product ideas. They’re not final drafts by any means but I’m find the stream of consciousness from typing with my iPhone to make the process easier. From there I’ll keep my iPad on with the same writing app so I can see the text. As I write I’ll use the iPad to bring in new content as inspiration as I write.

I’m starting to sketch loose wireframes from my ipad using the Sketchbook app for the iPad. It’s a bit slower than using a whiteboard or MUJI notebook for now but I think that’s due to getting used to the tools. It’s also not ideal situation for working with small groups. I’ve found it better when I’m using it by myself early in the morning.

My reading workflow has changed a lot. I’m attributing a lot of this to the Readability app that I have on all my devices including MacBook Air. Whether I find a post through Google Reader, a tweet or maybe through an email that someone sent me, I’m almost always saving it to read through Readability to read. My only wish is that I could save highlighted passages and possibly share them after the fact. I’ll also be posting on the threat that Readabilty has to online publishers and why it would be a mistake for publishers to block the app that want to save something to read later. But this post is about how my behavior has changed.

I can’t really use my iPad 2 anymore. It feels blurry and slow. I haven’t noticed any heat issues, battery loss or extra period of time for it to charge. The iPad camera’s quality surprised me a lot. The file size was noticeably smaller compare to the same image shot with my iPhone 4s. I stream more video clips which usually come from ESPN. This may have been due to the crazy week in the NFL…

In terms of other Gesture Theory work being influenced I’m reading a lot about optimizing for the larger screen’s retina capabilities both for apps and the web. There doesn’t seem to be a perfect solution yet but there’s a couple tricks that make sense for the images fro the web to be viewed on an iPad better. When developing we look at the iPad one the same way that IE6 felt back in the day. Apps have to still work on that device. We can’t just design around the faster processing speed of the new iPad. I don’t think I could get rid of my MacBook Air and go completely iPad and iPhone for design work. If I only wrote all day it might be possible. Because I use programs like Photoshop, Illustrator and inDesign with a mouse still, I don’t think I could stop using my normal workstation. If I could make everything that I design in pure code with the only graphics being photos shot from my iPhone and iPad, it’s not so far fetched of an idea. Maybe, maybe not.

I’ve been an iPad fan from day one. What I like about the iPad is that there’s no cursor. This opens up the ui in a million new ways. It flattens the need for external production (extraneous tactile buttons) which saves time. Design for gestures and ignore the plastic production and circuitry of buttons. The speed of both the network and ability to navigate faster without worrying about making a mistake. The ability to streamline processes that people couldn’t rely on interconnectivity before (I’ll talk about this more with a case study in the upcoming months).

What I don’t like. I think the weight issue is a big deal. I can’t hold this thing in one hand for a long time. It also makes it more difficult to type. The only other thing I don’t like about the iPad is the threat that print and web people feel towards it. It used to be that print didn’t like the web, now it feels like web has forgotten about that and is feeling threatened by the iPad

Next big things that I’d like see is the ability to connect two iPads to share the same screen. What I mean by this is the ability to have two iPads connect the same way that I can connect my MacBook air to a second monitor. I want the iPad to be lighter. I want more people to understand the power of saving a web site to the home screen from their iPad. Once this becomes a habit for people things are really going to take off.

Waking up this morning I didn’t even realize it was the first day of spring. What I did notice looking out the window that the light looked sharper, the air felt warmer and I wanted to capture what I saw. Walking to work I noticed a couple things that caught my eye. There were things blooming all around the Flatiron building but I couldn’t get an image that replicated what I saw with my eyes. A couple blocks down I ended up in front of Washington Square Park. Things lucked out. I posted my daily #walkingtoworktoday image. Only later on Twitter did I find out after seeing it RT’d that it was the first day of Spring. It’s funny how people share info these days. Now I find myself looking out my window before bed. The clouds (or fog?) is coming back in and putting on quite a show. I must have shot the Empire State Building hundred’s if not thousands of times now but it never gets boring for me. It’s something I never take for granted. The final image for the night is the same one that I shot first thing in the morning. It’s just another day in the city that doesn’t have two days the same way.

THE ATLANTIC: The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

I don’t use Instapaper that much for reading things that I’ve saved. What I do like going back to the app for is to find content from the Featured section. The Atlantic article is a great example of someone that observed what the house was giving an internal advantage and turned it into an advantage for himself.

SPIEGEL: Confessions of a Genius Art Forger

Ninakix mentioned this on Twitter a couple days ago. The biggest takeaway is that this person observed how the artists created things to such a degree that he was able to find missing gaps that if the artist had painted the scenes themself, it would be passable that what the forger created was the real thing

N+1: On the Market

I think I found this from the Longreads app, but I can’t be certain. Hopefully the internet police are ok with this. This post gave a look at what one’s person experience was like working at an art auction house.

THE BROOKS REVIEW: An iPad Bar

I hope some fine establishments in NYC see this post and redesign their tables to fit iPads. I know I’d visit them to check out the ergonomics of the experience of it.

GLOBAL MOXIE: 3.1 Million Pixels Are Heavy

As awesome as the new retina screen is for the ipad, there’s so many more image formats that need to be accounted for. It’s a headache for designer’s to consider. This article talks about some of the issues we need to consider as we move forward.

DARING FIREBALL: iPad (3)

Now that I have the new one, I’ll be curious to read more people’s reaction to the weight. I personally think it’s a pretty big deal and will post about it in a couple days from now. The Daring Fireball post is worth reading to compare the pre event to the actual release of the new iPad.

A LIST APART: The Best Browser is the One You Have with You

Smart practical observations to consider when designing these days.

LUKEW: Multi-Device Layout Patterns

The Layout Shifter is kind of an interesting method to work within the constraints of the browser depending on the device it’s found in. I could see this pattern being helpful for evolving how people navigate sections.

.NET: Jared Spool on usability and intuitive design

This seems pretty obvious but apparently it’s not. Watch the people using the stuff that you design. It’s actually one of the best things about being a designer.

THE VERGE: Sparrow takes flight: how a startup built the Gmail app Google couldn’t

I’m not totally convinced that Sparrow is the next best way to view email. It feels kind of slow and I don’t totally trust it. With that said it does a great job like Path of showing different interaction models that are worth observing. This post talks about some of the thinking behind the new app.

ALL THINGS D: Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann’s Lesson for Start-Ups: Go Your Own Way

There’s a lot of great points in this post.

ALJAZEERA: Russia’s election, Kony2012 and online voyeur justice

Interesting view on how transparency can be turned on it’s head.

I shot both images within a couple moments of each other. No filters were used with either one when using Camera+. Biggest issue for me is if I want to pull out my iPad and look like a tourist now that I have the best lens to shoot…

iPhone 4S (2.9 MB)

the new iPad (2.1 MB)

My initial reaction about reading about the Curator’s Code was that it was one of the most ridiculous things that I’ve read in a long, long time. People do link back in a fair way as it stands. People do use via links when. For someone to basically create a system that really benefits themselves is self serving. I’ve never been comfortable with people throwing out the term curator either, but I’ll come back to that in a moment. There are so many ways people find content on the web. People like reading and sharing content. They don’t like spending extra time trying to figure out how they come came across it in the first place, and having to check back with other sites to see if someone else mentioned it first. For example I might read something from http://tweetedtimes.com/#!/MichaelSurtees. All those links are based on people that I follow on Twitter. I may not have seen the link from any of those people in my stream though. The Curator’s Code does nothing to help attribute this. If I want to share a link who am I supposed to mention if five people I’m following all mentioned it? As for this blog here, when I post about a link I typically talk about how I came across the article. I find it helpful to include that in the narrative.

I was surprised to see that more than a couple people felt the same way as I do about this system. Some of the private & public notes that I received included “Seems like inside-baseball journo back-patting. Also, misuse of word ‘curation’ yet again”, “Popova has stated that she dislikes the word “curation” — but she does seem to think that she has weird ownership of it as an activity”, “I’m a bit WTF about it”, “It seems to be premised on the idea that “via” was too easy to type” and my personal favorite “It reminded me of the 14-year-olds on Tumblr who whine when they’re not credited for “finding” a Warhol print. On the Internet. Laughable.”…

Ultimately my response to the Curators Code is this:

I have respect for people that actually create something, I don’t for people that overshare and think they deserve some sort of credit.

I like when people pass along stuff that I shared with my name on it but I’m not going to hold it against them if they don’t. I don’t own the links I share and no one should try to make a system that really benefits a small group of people that only link to each other.

Probably my favorite article that I’ve read calling out the Curator’s Code for what it is, is from @mattlanger titled Stop Calling it Curation. I wish I had written it myself. Some of my favorite quotes from the post:

“Curation” is an act performed by people with PhDs in art history; the business in which we’re all engaged when we’re tossing links around on the internet is simple “sharing.” And some of us are very good at that! (At least if we accept “very good” to mean “has a large audience.”)

And yet we see this sort of thing happen all the time on the internet, all these great hand-wringing debates over “proper” attribution (“proper” usually meaning “sending traffic my way as a reward for finding something first”).

The self-described “curator” of the modern day web seeks special recognition for what is nothing more than a pattern of behavior that distinguishes an individual from those with uncurious, idle minds. Rather than issuing demerits on the latter we’re instead being invited—no! implored, rather, via an “actionable code of ethics”—to heap praise upon the former. And I’m sorry, but I refuse to be bullied into giving people credit for shit they’re supposed to be doing, especially not when that comes at the price of devaluing the most important object of attribution—original content—by setting it up as just one among a multitude of things deserving of attribution.

Furthermore, Maria Popova was quoted by David Carr today saying that “When we don’t honor discovery, we are robbing somebody’s time and labor.” Which: Bull. Shit.

I could basically copy + paste the entire post…

Other stuff worth reading about comes from Marco Arment post I’m not a “curator” and Daniel Howells’ post Trying to understand The Curator’s Code’s approach to attributing discovery.

UPDATE 1:
I have no idea how I missed this from BloombergBusinessweek but it’s pretty great. Additional symbols are suggested in Do We Need a Copyright Symbol for Sharing? Some of my personal favorites included below:

✉ Chain e-mail forwarded from Uncle Seymour
☕ Overheard in Starbucks
☔ Saw it out my window
♛ Tip left by a Foursquare Mayor
¿ I can’t remember—and may have totally just made this up

Almost daily I’m updating apps on my iPhone and iPad. Half the time I’ll just press the Update All button without too much care. For the rest of the time if it’s an app that I use regularly I’ll read the release notes carefully. It’s not because I’m not going to update the app but I’m curious to see what issues they tried fixing from a previous release and new features that they’re adding. A couple days ago that happened to Path as noted above.

The first point from the Path release notes caught my attention because I do use my Nike+ GPS watch everyday. I’ll be posting about that up & down experience once I finish my first 13 week training cycle (I’m on week 10). While I don’t use Path everyday it’s an app that people should keep an eye on. They have people from FB running it and I’m guessing if FB started as a mobile site it would be something like Path. So the combination of Nike+ GPS and Path caught my attention. The challenge with the release notes is that Path’s mention was one bullet point and a link to their site for more info that I had to manually type in.

Comparing those release notes to the Forbes post (Forbes is a client of Gesture Theory) to the release notes it offers a much more compelling reason why someone would want to attach their Nike+ GPS data to Path, or not depending on knowing what they are sharing. The 3rd party article is a much more compelling experience when compared to the bullet point app feature release note. The challenge is that I probably wouldn’t have seen the article if it had not been for a tweet.

Will I actually connect the two pieces of info? Not yet because I don’t think people will want to see my #walkingtoworktoday path everyday nor the same routes I take running over time. I also don’t know if I have the option to keep a run private or not. Over time I suspect that I’ll relax a bit on apps that don’t allow me to decide what I can share publicly and privately but for the time being I’ll keep an eye on other blogs that talk about their Path and Nike+ GPS experience.

I would love for Apple to evolve their app feature release notes to include hyperlinks for more info and potentially give apps more freedom to share more info in a compelling way that people would actually take the time to read the notes as opposed to ignoring them. How that could be done is allowing for images and discourage the use of bullet points.