As the internet landscape has evolved at a blistering pace, universities have been left behind and often teaching skills and concepts that are years out of date. I was excited to read about The University of Colorado’s Boulder Digital Work program. Their stated mission is, “developing today and tomorrow’s digital leaders and entrepreneurs.”

This sounds like a very forward thinking program and hopefully it will produce a lot of local talent with a much better understanding of the digital realm than most schools offer today. Courses include Interaction Design, Experience Design, Digital Branding, Social Networks, and Software Development.

I hope this program is successful and that it will help to continue the growth of Boulder as a hub for innovation.

Over the past few years the landscape of home entertainment has been changing. As broadband internet access has found its way into households across the country the utilization of on-demand content is becoming commonplace.

Netflix, who we’ve criticized before and been pleasantly surprised by their response, has been really on top of capturing this next generation of home entertainment. In fact, it seems like they’ve secretly been waiting for this moment since the incarnation of their brand “Internet Flicks”.

When I first heard of Netflix I was in early high school, my friend’s parents had just signed up for this new service that delivered movies via mail. I was confused, how in the world did the name Netflix really correspond to mail delivery movies? Further, was it really worth waiting two days to get a movie when you could go to a local store and get it in 30 minutes? Well, as they say, the proof was in the pudding. As the internet boomed in the early 2000’s Netflix became a real time rival to those other rental services such as broke-ass-buster Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.

However, it wasn’t until this past year that I really started to respect Netflix as a company with vision. In fact, I find it almost creepy how well they’ve positioned themselves in today’s current home entertainment market.

I imagine the idea of on-demand content has to be terrifying to most rental services. With pay-per-view, Hulu, torrenting, and iTunes the idea of brick and mortar rental is on the way out. And while DVD mail delivery isn’t quite as dead as store rental it definitely has a limited lifespan.

Here’s where Netflix is different from a lot of companies. They recognized their business model was dying and instead of whining about it they acted. They didn’t whine about liscensing costs, they didn’t worry about not having a media center product. Instead they took their vision and started working. Giving their customers an opportunity to watch movies instantly on their PC’s for free. Hear that? I said FREE. By not expecting immediate returns on their investment they captured a substantial portion of the online steaming market share and the buzz around it.

It comes down to this. How many people would have been willing to pay an extra $10 a month to try online movie streaming? Maybe a few. How many were willing to try it for free? Everybody.

Netflix, whose name now seems surprisingly perfect for their service, is suddenly a leader in the online delivery world. Since they started delivering online content they’ve cut deals with a number of home media center device manufactures. Including Roku, a few Blu-ray players, and Microsoft’s Xbox. Further, they’ve bundled their online delivery with their plans at no additional cost (I imagine they make up some money by not having to use as much postage) and they’ve started adding HD quality (720p) content.

In essence, Netflix lined up their challenges, picked up a bat, and started knocking them out of the park one by one.

Now granted the battle for next generation content delivery isn’t over, but it seems clear that Netflix isn’t holding the losing hand. They’ve played their cards perfectly up to here and I can happily say that I’m a user of their service and it rocks.

Who sat down and made the executive decision that advertising must look crappy and out-of-place? I understand that the point of advertising is to attract attention and therefore should be an anomaly that the viewer is drawn to, but come on… enough is enough. People are starting to become desensitized to big flashy ads that are borderline unethical.

So how does one maintain ad-space and a good design? The online radio site Pandora managed to solve this problem. Instead of sticking the ad in a banner and calling it good, Pandora takes it to the next level by incorporating the ad design into the background. Not only does this draw more attention to the ad (by using the entire background it creates more visual interest) it also doesn’t sacrifice the design for an ad - it adds to it. Furthermore (and probably most importantly) the ad is usually a memorable one. A good example of this was when I was debating this topic with a co-worker (who is a general hater of flash sites) and he named a previous ad without even thinking about it. I say good work, Pandora. Not only do I love your music, but you made me a believer in ad-space.

Perhaps one of the most enlightening discussions we’ve had at Imulus was in regard to the following question.

Starting now if you had to read all type for the rest of your life in one typeface, what would it be?^*

My answer: Gotham. The font is profound, clean, inescapably strong, yet different enough in weight to convey emphasis and prowess. Gotham is the sort of typeface that a type-designer becomes famous for. It’s Helvetica with out the genericism^**.

So while Gotham is used frequently (pdf) it deserves credit for being a landmark typeface in the twenty first century^***.

In the end a typeface is much like wine, if it tastes good to you the complexities and price don’t mean much. However, you may just find that over time your tastes refine. And as far as Gotham is concerned, it’s about as refined as it gets.

^{* Note: This means an entire font family, not one particular weight.
** I’m a wannabe lexicographer.
*** Gotham was released from H&J in the year 2000.}

Every now and then I drift into the Google Labs to have a look at the current projects underway. This latest round I was intrigued by several cool projects baking in the Google oven.

Google Notebook

http://www.google.com/notebook

Pros: This is my favorite item coming out of the labs. Especially if you install the "My Notebook" toolbar for your browser. This way you can highlight and right click items on a Web page and save them to your notebook. It is sort of a glorified scribble pad of idea, text and links which you can search on later.

Cons: I haven’t found one yet, but let me keep working with it and I’ll be sure to find something it can do better.

Google Music Trends

Visit http://www.google.com/trends/music

Pros: The default listing isn’t that interesting but once you select a Genres or Country, then the list becomes a bit more interesting.

Cons: It’s just Google Talk participants so the data feeding into this is a bit suspect to say the least.

Google Trends

Visit http://www.google.com/trends

Pros: Presents a visual trend line on various search terms. The regions and cities is a useful subset of data which sometimes shows very distinct differences how users search.

Example: I used "web site, website" to see which term most people search on. Interestingly enough both terms have dropped in search volume from 2004 to 2008 however the news references for the terms has increased in the same time period. Plus, India much prefers the grammatically incorrect "website" whereas the French and Italians lean towards "Web site".

Cons: The news on the right seems a bit odd and out of place. I actually stumbled on two broken links during my short tests.

Google Code Search

Visit http://www.google.com/codesearch

Pros: If you are looking for code examples to steal learn and integrate into your project, this is certainly a good point to start from.

Cons: Just stay away unless your a coder.

Google Mars

Visit http://www.google.com/mars/

Pros: I think I found a real nice piece of real-estate once we find a way to get there.

Cons: For real? Why do we need this? And why does it wrap 4 times when you zoom all the way out? I’m still waiting for Google to drop a Martian into the map as an Easter egg.

Google Information / 411

Dial 1-800-GOOG-411

Pros: Uses voice recognition to locate businesses and then patches you right thru, and yes it’s free. They located "Imulus" in Boulder, Colorado just fine and on the first try. Not bad for a word which is hard to decipher with voice recognition.

Cons: Where is the residential side of this

Transit

Visit http://www.google.com/transit

Pro: Once you find a location which has public transportation the familiar Google Map interface is overlaid by transit locations which highlight when you select a schedule which is close to the time you wish to leave.

Cons: The city availability is pretty limiting, especially in the US where the coverage is scattered and seems to defy logic. For instance why would they have coverage for Grand Junction, Colorado rather then Denver, Boulder or even Colorado Springs? Sorry, no New York or Chicago either.