All the keynotes from the Web 2.0 Expo are now available in video on Blip.TV. For your convenience, I selected the ones I liked the most and placed them here. My first selection was Jason Fried, co-founder and President of 37signals, the guys behind Basecamp. Very engaging speaker. I don’t actually agree 100% with him, but he’s got some good points. His major message is that a software designer has to act as a museum or gallery curator: you don’t try and put everything you have or everything people ask there. You have to keep it simple. While I agree with the main message, I would say that museums and galleries have physical limitations, or shelf-space constraints that makes the metaphor less applicable. Implementing every single feature request people ask is not the way to go, but listening to feedback and making products rich in desirable features and still useable is still very important.
The initial iPods were very simple devices, and became very popular as they did their one thing very well. Over time, though, it evolved to the current iPod Touch, which is a very complex tool, and essentially can run hundreds of applications from the AppStore. The key is not to limit your product to a low number of features: the trick is to keep the product usable and useful. Here’s the video, so that you can make your own mind:
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