Sharing Lives As Stories On the Web 30
blackbearnh writes "Jeff Holden spent a decade at Amazon, where he was involved as Senior Vice President of Consumer Websites with the recommendation engine, Amazon Prime, and the product review system. He's left now, and has started Pelago, a company that wants to help mobile users turn their lives into stories they can share on the web. Among the interesting effects he discusses in this interview for O'Reilly Radar is that users of their product, Whrrl, have talked about changing their lives to make more interesting stories. Holden also talks about some of the work he did at Amazon, privacy issues that arise when social networking starts to become ubiquitous, and why he thinks the Apple App Store review system is seriously broken. 'One of the things that happens with an iPhone is when you uninstall an app, it asks you to rate it. And it defaults to one-star. ... The problem is ... there's no kind of qualification. Anybody just downloads it and checks it out or doesn't check it out, right? And I think a number of people run it and they see that you have to sign in and they just delete it. And you get a one-star rating out of those experiences.'"
App Store - What? (Score:4, Informative)
Does he own an iPhone/iTouch?
When you uninstall the application, there's a large button right below the stars that says 'NO THANKS'.
It's very clear, and .. oh, useful -- when you uninstall an application but don't feel like rating it.
Maybe his eyes are broken.
Re:App Store - What? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it sounds like you don't have an iPhone or iPod Touch.
To uninstall an app on the device, you hold down icons until they get wiggly, then you touch the 'x'. The OS asks you two questions:
* do you really want to remove the app, and
* do you want to rate it
It's unobtrusive. Really.
This is a prime example of why direct experience trumps mental models/thought experiments. In real life, it's not a big deal. In the abstract world, it sounds like an unbelievably unwieldy thing. UI designers (and armchair quarterbacks) take note.