Interactions of Interest

Over at Hackaday there is an ongoing series of articles called Inputs of Interest. Last year I wrote my a post Novel Interactions that will end up being the first in an ongoing collection of articles called Interactions of Interest. I personally enjoy building and interacting with new experiences. For those that catch my interest and stay in my memory I’m going to collect and share them.

Sony Linkbuds — while I ultimately couldn’t find a cushion and ear fit that allowed me to listen for more than half an hour I thought the design around these was really creative. Being able to hear your environment while also listening to music, a podcast or book is really nice in a variety of situations. Additionally moving the earbud interactions from being on device to picking up movement from the area near your ear is something I think we might see more of from future devices.

Animoog Z — There are two synth related items on this list. I never used the original Animoog software, but I recently loaded Animoog Z, and it’s been a lot of fun. My daughter and I can sit down tweaking various parameters while launching new sounds into space just to see what we can create next.

Roland 50 — Roland is celebrating 50 years of making awesome devices and tools. In celebration of that they launched a synth web app that is mind-blowing. While this is a lot of fun to create with it is also inspiring to think that this is all running in the browser meaning they could launch it into the world and make it available across device, OS and app store environments with little friction.

Delta — A couple months ago I traveled for work. Along the way I found out I could head home earlier than planned, but I figured making that happen without it becoming a lot of trouble was unlikely. It’s pretty crazy that I was able to take care of bumping my flight up so I could be home with my family all in the Delta app in under 10 minutes without a change fee. Thinking back 10 years ago when I was traveling as a software consultant it’s wild how easy logistics interactions like this have come.

Apple Research App — For the last year I’ve opted in to a few different research studies available in the Apple Research app. Each week or month my phone reminds me I have some questions to answer, and ever so often even has me review the data that I’ve opted into sharing with these studies. What surprises me is how few studies there seem to be. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it means there is a lot of effort going into ensuring the quality of these studies, but the way the app works, how transparent it makes things and prompts you to keep in touch makes me wonder if it’s quality, or a lack of (legit) organizations knowing this is out there.