Bits and pieces

I finally went through my YouTube account settings and found two little gems. Under Playback Setup, you can choose to have YouTube play higher-quality video by default. Also under playback setup, you can turn off annotations by default. At last, I don’t have to keep adding “&fmt=18″ to the ends of all my YouTube URLs.

What I don’t understand is why they don’t turn annotations off by default. There might be some cases where annotations help (I have yet to see one), but for the most part they simply detract from whatever video is being played.

On the other hand, I don’t REALLY need the high quality to be defaulted. But when I click HQ, I expect it to work. And when it doesn’t, it’s oh so irritating.

I always find it cool when user interface designers find ways to do things while staying away from the tried-and-true standby, the button. The mp3 player in this instead uses mere tilting and tapping on corners in order to make things happen. Apparently some Japanese engineer thought up the idea, and just whipped it up from scratch. It may actually be impractical in many cases, but it’s still a neat idea, and perhaps designers will keep these kinds of ideas in the backs of their minds when they begin work on the next round of new products.

My friend and ex-roommate had some really good examples of this idea too. First, he had (and still has) this touch desk lamp that will switch between low light, high light, and off settings every time you touch any part of its metal surface. Second, he has the JBL Creature Speakers where instead of the traditional volume knob, there was a touch volume control. It had two parts, a little metal region with a minus sign on it and another region with a plus sign, and to turn the volume up or down, you just needed to put your finger on the right symbol.

Lastly, here’s a great example of how web sites can still function even without the pervasive mouse click. The explore section is especially interesting, as you can see different examples of life without a clicker.