thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

As a parent – I’m always interested in ways that children can get more engaged with learning about everything. Touch screens like those used by the iPad are clearly of interest and as a music fan I liked this one.  The featured app here is a curated history of jazz that costs $US9.95.

It offers more content that most books on Jazz and a much richer experience with different video and other content all collated together. That also means that content can be updated online within the limits of technology and pricing models.

One aspect of the application that I like is the keyboard style navigation at the bottom of the screen. The keyboard “look” is an interactive timeline.

It is great to see application designers rethinking the intersection of reading, listening, touching, looking.

The UX designer calls this a collision of media.

Scobelizer says.

“I look at a lot of iPad apps and there are very few that get to a really great interface. http://www.955dreams.com/ History of Jazz’ app is one of those examples. Really nice all the way around. What did it take? I sit down with the team to learn more. Their app is currently rated five stars and is high on the best selling list.” (35 mins)

What is also very interesting about this video is the discussion around the design process and especially about how to bring a concept to life for the iPad.

Here is what the application looks like on an iPad.

What have I been up to at the start of 2011. Lots of swimming and working on WordCampNZ 2011. This mention map looks to be interactive and probably updates in real time.

Hover over the map to explore connections. Enter your twitter id to view your own map.

Note: the original flash version from http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap died some time back so have just added a screenshot in April 2012 to fill the space. Very interesting to see that some people hotpspots are still hot even 18 months later.

Not sure if this link will work Mention map – dialogcrm you may need to login to your twitter account from mentionmap.