Saturday, April 10, 2004

I bought a Harmony Remote yesterday from Best Buy (they just started carrying it) and I set the thing up yesterday. I like it -- it does it's job and it's far better than any universal remote control at orchestrating all the devices in my home AV system.

Taking a step back from the Harmony Remote, the fact that something as complicated as the Harmony remote is even necessary highlights the unnecessary complexity of home audio/video equipment in general. Jakob Nielsen talked about this a few weeks ago in his alertbox column. He talks about the usability of BMW automobiles, and consumer electronics remote controls. Personally, I'm always shocked at how cryptic the on-screen menus are on every Sony camcorder I've ever used. I could go on and on with examples of horrible user experiences from traditional consumer electronics devices -- I find them at every turn. This is a problem that we are very tuned into at SnapStream
I created this blog almost a year ago and I'm finally going to start using it!

I'm a long-time blog reader, but near first time publisher. I'm just starting to get more tuned into and immersed in this new media.

A few of the blogs that I read right now are pvr.blogs.com and Om Malik's blog (mostly because it was one of the earlier blogs that I came across and I find the not really indian to be clever and informative. Occassionally, I'll check out Dave Winer's blog because in my explorations of RSS, XML I've heard his name a lot. And then there is Dick Scoble @ Microsoft.

Onwards!