Kelly Smith | Made in Seattle

We’re working on a new web app called ImageKind and as part of that project I’m responsible for developing workflow, user interface and development progress. While designing the shopping cart, I was curious (hey, we are called Curious Office) as to whether or not I should incorporate breadcrumbs into the site to aid people as they moved through the check out process.

I found this interesting study which did the most thorough analysis I’ve ever seen on this subject. You are welcome to read for yourself but the basic summary is this:

“Breadcrumb users were found to use the Back button less often than users who did not use the breadcrumb; however, no differences were found in the efficiency measures of total pages visited, navigation bar clicks, embedded link clicks, or time to complete the search tasks. It is not known if all participants understood the function of the breadcrumb as a navigational tool.”

I think I’ll be leaving breadcrumbs out…

It was just bookmarking a photoshop site using Del.icio.us as I always do and it occurred to me that I’ve got plenty of old bookmarks in my Firefox browser that I need to get into del.icio.us. Then I had to wonder…what is the point of using your browser to bookmark URLs locally anymore? I haven’t done so in at least six months. Why would I? Surely there must be a reason. But honestly, I can’t think of any. In 5 years, I predict few people will be adding bookmarks to their browser the way they do now. At best, I could see downloading my server-side bookmarks to my laptop before I leave on a trip but otherwise, I wouldn’t consider managing my bookmarks the way I did two years ago.

For the most part, we at the office that’s curious focus on what some would call Web2.0 companies. However, those that know me know that I’ve mostly got a digital video background. After we sold Myrio to Siemens I decided to move on and work on some other projects. Curious Office is one such project.

But I recently had dinner with an old colleague from Siemens and we were talking about the war over the future of our TVs. One thing that he confirmed was that Siemens was losing the IPTV war even in their own backyard. For such a huge initiative, it would seem unlikely that Deutsche Telekom would rely on Redmond vs. their century old partners over in Munich. When it comes to IP-based television, the only games in town that really mattered were those from Myrio/Siemens and Microsoft. Now, it seems that Siemens is losing the battle in its own country and to me that suggests taht Microsoft may very well control our set-top boxes and possibly our future living rooms.