Making better products

Do you think simplicity is the be all and end all of design ? Is it the panacea that we are all looking for ?

Quite a profound pic that has been floating around on the web.

Steve Job’s take on “What is design ? “

In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product.

PS: Emphasis mine

After much speculation and rumours, looks like Microsoft has won the Facebook deal with a $240 million investment for 1.6% of the company. If Microsoft’s investment is indicative of what Facebook is worth, its valuation is somewhere in the ballpark of $15 billion. After having lost out on some other high profile deals such as MySpace, this will be great joy for Microsoft.

The deal makes Microsoft  the sole advertising provider for Facebook in the United States and internationally. With facebook’s mamoth user base, this definitely means serious business for Microsoft.

The crucial aspect is how Microsoft takes this forward and improves it’s partnership with Facebook. There is a lot of scope for Microsoft to leverage this deal and work on it and bring on enhancements which will enable some Microsoft Products such as Live Messenger and the Live platform as such to be integrated with Facebook.

My bet is that this is going to be a very interesting time for the Web 2.0 space as we see major players getting into this space.

Image Courtesy : Webcommunityforum

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The social news

ZDNET blogs

Boston Herald

Orkut, the second largest online social network has a new look. Apparently they are rolling out the new redesign to select groups of users and their blog states that they will continue to do this over coming weeks.

One of their goals have to been to maintain the “true blue simplicity” but at first glance I find the white backgrounds and the rounded corners to be very distracting.

What do you think ? Leave me a comment.