As the previous post, this is a fidelity twist on an earlier post. While it still makes sense, I think you should be able to speak to it as well. And I guess next time I’m close to where I’ve searched a realtime photo earlier, it should just present it to me so I don’t have to walk over to it physically. Although that has a certain charm to it.

Privacy concerns suspended briefly, the app could submit all searches and make the info available for people not at the actual location.

I was reminded of this old idea and decided to step up the fidelity to see if I would learn more about it.

I have a feeling most highlights will be full sentences, so it could just be that, tapping a sentence and done. Which reminds me that it’s odd Kindle’s highlighter doesn’t default to sentences.

It would also be cool if this one could remember pages and add the highlights when it sees it again.

It should probably also save everything it saw as an image so you could get the context of a highlight.

Taking the eyes off the road is the most common cause for traffic accidents. So why don’t we change the in-car display to an on-road display? And while we’re at it, place a depth camera (a Kinect, basically) next to the projector and just don’t show anything if we’re in a dangerous situation? And while we’re still at it, let’s place a projector on the back of the car telling your drivers where you’re going and let them turn off their navigation and just follow you.

It seems people out there agree that it should be just as fast taking action on photos as it is taking them. The most common ideas were “what if I want to share with someone who’s not there”, and “this could work for adding the photo to apps like Reminders, Evernote and Instagram” from Carsten. The most tangible feedback came from Mikkel who simply built it for iOS and sent me a beta invite. The power of the internet right there. Anyway, I updated the mock.

Sharing photos should be faster, part 1

The default way of sharing photos today is kind of slow: Open the camera, take a photo, open that photo, click the share button, type the name of a recipient, hit send. I find that I typically share photos with 4-5 people, but that’s it 95% of the time. Why do I have to type out their names?

I’d like an app that lets me share a photo in the same movement as taking the photo. It could be as simple as this; tap anywhere in the viewfinder to take the photo, then drag the photo onto a contact.

Instagram lets your friends see what you see. Foursquare lets them be where you are. Pinterest lets them bookmark what you bookmark. But what about when you find yourself having lunch looking over the bay and Otis Redding comes on? Or you walk into a cafe that plays Just Dropped In? Or you put on a hat and blast Willie Nelson out?

It would be fun having an app that lets you not only share what you see, but also, you guessed it, which song you hear. And not in a bootleg-ambient-noise sound quality mess kind of way. Full quality. It would recognize the music with a technique similar to Shazam and find a version online, maybe using Spotify, Rdio or Hype Machine.

Users of the app would then be able to use the stream as a mixtape of carefully hand picked songs.

I spent 15 minutes staring at a Brother multi-function printer today. “No network connection” while the wifi symbol said full signal. “Go to web admin page” without telling me the URL. Defaulting to fax, despite being bought in 2013. Wondering how a printer like this can ever make its way to the market, let alone why anyone would buy it, my eye caught the box it came in. The printer on the box actually looked good.

In the supermarket almost all the products are light and healthy if you ask the packaging. But there’s a Nutrition Facts label, standardized across all the items in the supermarket, telling it like it is.

In the electronics store, all you see is carefully crafted copy and photoshopped images. There’s a guy walking towards you right now, you could ask for his recommendations, but you know where a big portion of his salary comes from.

Like food has a Nutrition Facts label, electronics should have a Usability Facts label. The contents should come from an independent organization or even the government. I first thought of a full disclosure of the user-centered design process the product had gone through: These are our personas, these are the high-priority tasks, these are the scenarios. But maybe that’s too vague. A boiled-down version of an ISO usability report could maybe work. But why not just let the product go through intensive user tests?

Getting good numbers on the Usability Facts label would have an obvious effect on the sales. But being really easy to use could go from being a branding and word of mouth instrument to a factual, quantified selling point. We could get things started by bringing our home-brewed Usability Facts stickers to Best Buy today. At least I would feel slightly better about the 15 minutes I spent staring at a Brother printer today.

As an example, let’s say you have this contract number in your Evernote:

Now, when you need it, you’ll have to do this before you can paste it into an email:

Launch Evernote > Click the search field > Type ‘contract’ > Click the right note > Find the place where it says ‘Contract’ > Select it > Cmd-C it (7 steps)

This would be faster:

Press Cmd-Space > type ‘contract’ > press enter (3 steps)

I wonder if this could be done as a plug-in to Spotlight. If not, it could easily sit in the space Evernote is already occupying in the topbar.

This could work for your code snippets, phone numbers, emails, addresses, all those things you spend time on hunting down every day.

This app generates a review based on how much you move while watching.

Sudden movements such as those generated by the shock of protagonists being surprised in deserted parking lots can be detected and registered as such.

Users can get a hint at what’s coming by glancing at the boredom graph

A site shows the movies that are currently playing and matches you with similar users.

I tried Deja Vu, Evernote and Everplaces, but the native camera wins every time for two reasons: It’s right there on the lock screen and taking the photo is the ONLY thing I have to do in the situation. Swipe, tap, done.

So what if we had an app that acts as an inbox for the native camera?

All those weird signs and cats seem to be coming in streams, so we could maybe select multiple at a time:

Whenever you drop a photo on a bucket, the app performs the action that belongs to it, and it could even allow developers to create their own actions.