Last week, I was introduced to an application called feedly by one of my fellow Enterprise Irregulars, Anshu Sharma. From the home page, it's described as "…a firefox extension which weaves twitter and Google Reader into a magazine like experience." In Anhsu's blog post, his focus is on the new service called feedly mini; however, I must admit, that I never tried feedly at all. After only week, I am hooked, and here's why:

1. Beauty – Feedly is very pleasing to the eyes. The flow, design, navigation, and page layout just work very well together. It enhances your reading experience and makes browsing feel less like homework and more like a hobby. This is one thing I have missed since subscribing to the many blogs I follow. If I am going to spend multiple hours a day keeping up, it helps when it's comfortable and fun.
2. Full Google Reader integration – I was highly impressed with the Google reader integration and how easy it was to setup. Actually, it was so easy that I didn't have to do anything at all. Once installed, it gathered all my Google reader information and built my page automatically. The picture above was what I got straight out of the box, no configuration necessary. It organizes all your content based on your current feeds and categories. Just in case you are worried that you won't be sold on feedly and you may want to go back to Google reader, do not fret. When you read, share, or save a post in feedly, it automatically does the same action in Google reader. It even synchronizes between the two when you subscribe or unsubscribe to a feed. It also works in reverse, so anything you do in Google reader, is reflected in feedly. Even as a bonus, when I went to email a post to a friend, it was able to do a live lookup from my gmail address book…sweet! Hey, hold on here, do I see a Google acquisition coming on?
3. Keyboard Shortcuts – If you are a shortcut geek like me, that is the first thing you will check when trying a new tool. Well, good news, feedly uses most of the same shortcuts as GReader. So if you are already used to and addicted to these, you will be very pleased. There are many extras available too that aren't available on GReader. The only one I miss that I haven't seen on feedly is the Shift-A shortcut for marking all items in a category as read. They have a button, but no shortcut (yet?).
4. Feedly mini – I have used feedly mini a little too, and it's also a neat add-on. When you visit a page, you can see if others are talking about it on twitter, digg, etc. You can also save, share, or email the current page from the mini feedly toolbar.
5. New Content Discovery – based on your current subscriptions and current friends, feedly builds recommendations to other content. I have already found and subscribed to a couple of blogs using this service. Maybe the crew at feedly should go talk to the guys at pressflip and really get some powerful content suggestion going on.
6. Other cool toys – twitter integration, friendfeed integration, and a neat semantic web feature that uses open calais, which has much potential to change the way we search and organize web content.

Feedly breaks the mold of a traditional RSS reader and makes for a very enjoyable reading experience. I never had complaints about Google reader, but after using feedly and seeing the difference that beautiful visual aesthetics can make, I won't be going back anytime soon. Feedly is a winner and my new RSS reader of choice. I just put in my pre-order for the Kindle 2, so I hope the guys over at feedly are working on a Kindle friendly version; that would just be the icing on the cake.

Disclaimer: Even though it may sound like it, I do not work for feedly as a product evangelist.

• Craig Cmehil
• Dan McWeeney
• Ed Herrmann
• Rich Heilman
• Thomas Jung

This week we have launched the new site where we will be maintaining a blog, podcast, and all kinds of other good stuff. Please check it out, bookmark it, subscribe to it, love on it, and tell all your geek friends about it at http://enterprisegeeks.com

We are proud to be an officially approved Blogger Content Community with the SAP Blogger Relations group ran be Mike Prosceno and Stacey Fish.

Note: Many of us are already affiliated with similar groups like the SAP Mentors and the Enterprise Irregulars. The goal of the new group is not meant to replace our involvement in these, but be complementary instead.

You know how an iceberg is 90% underwater? Well, most software is like that too — there's a pretty user interface that takes about 10% of the work, and then 90% of the programming work is under the covers. And if you take into account the fact that about half of your time is spent fixing bugs, the UI only takes 5% of the work. And if you limit yourself to the visual part of the UI, the pixels, what you would see in PowerPoint, now we're talking less than 1%.

As he reveals the different iceberg secrets, he touches on one that often affects many programmers. When you show something that looks too fancy, it sends a false message of how close the application is to being finished.  This is the illusion of completeness.

If you show a nonprogrammer a screen which has a user interface which is 100% beautiful, they will think the program is almost done. People who aren't programmers are just looking at the screen and seeing some pixels. And if the pixels look like they make up a program which does something, they think "oh, gosh, how much harder could it be to make it actually work?" The big risk here is that if you mock up the UI first, presumably so you can get some conversations going with the customer, then everybody's going to think you're almost done. And then when you spend the next year working "under the covers," so to speak, nobody will really see what you're doing and they'll think it's nothing.

Because of the rigidity that comes from this illusion, the application looks too complete to get useful feedback on the real functionality.  Instead, people will focus on superficial usability tweaks like screen layout, button placement, background colors, etc.  Kathy Sierra elaborates on this topic in her post Don't make the Demo look Done.

The more "done" something appears, the more narrow and incremental the feedback…Show them something polished and pretty, and you'll get feedback on font sizes. The reviewers make incremental tweaks, blinded by what's in front of them. But show a napkin sketch, and they don't just see what's there, they see what's possible.

Kathy is a master wordsmith and I heed to her expertise; I couldn't have summed it up any better.  We need to ditch the fancy mockups and powerpoint presentations and instead, be honest with our customers and embrace the sketchy prototype.

Bonus

Adobe Flex is a great framework for building quick prototypes; however, because it's so fast and easy to build nice looking applications, it's easy to fall into the completeness illusion.  It would take about 5 minutes to create an application like this one that I snagged from an On Reflexion post called Napkin skins in Flex.  Click the image below to run the application.

Flex makes it really easy to apply styles to your applications.  By simple applying a new style, eyes are opened, illusions removed, and truths revealed.  Again, click on the image below and run the same exact application, just with a different skin.

If you are a java person, you can use the open source Java Swing Look & Feel called Napkin Look & Feel

I found the napkin skin and other cool Flex skins at scalenine.  Check out these other "sketchy" skins.  Run the app by clicking on the images.

Edding (my favorite sketchy skin)

Flekscribble

Today, I came across some news about the new, upcoming game from LucasArts, Star Wars: Force Unleashed.

The Star Wars saga will continue in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a videogame developed by LucasArts, which casts players as Darth Vader's "Secret Apprentice" and promises to unveil new revelations about the Star Wars galaxy.

Yes, like any self respecting geek, I am a Star Wars fan, and the evil thought of being Darth Vader's secret apprentice, is more than a little exciting. However, this isn't what interested me the most.

As its name implies, The Force Unleashed completely re-imagines the scope and scale of the Force by taking full advantage of newly developed technologies that will be seen and experienced for the first time: Digital Molecular Matter (DMM), by Pixelux Entertainment, and euphoria by NaturalMotion Ltd. Paired with the powerful Havok Physics? system, these new technologies create gameplay only possible on the new generation of consoles. DMM incorporates the physical properties of anything in the environment so that everything reacts exactly like it should – wood breaks like wood, glass shatters like glass, plants on the planet Felucia bend like plants on the planet Felucia would, and more. Meanwhile, as a revolutionary behavioral-simulation engine, euphoria enables interactive characters to move, act and even think like actual human beings, adapting their behavior on the fly and resulting in a different payoff every single time.

This stuff is so freakin' cool that I had to search around a little more. After looking around, I stumbled across this baby, which will set your geekiness levels through the roof. No matter if you are a gamer or a Star Wars fan, this is six minutes of video that you have to watch. The trailer shows and explains the three technologies they integrated for the game. This will not only change gaming, but it also opens up whole new worlds in areas that involve real life simulations for both entertainment and business purposes. Geek overload warning ahead.

My favorite quotes from the trailer

• Havok Physics 2 SDK – Continuous Physics engine:
  "allows us to move a great number of objects on the screen at any given time."
• NaturalMotion euphoria – Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS): "[the game characters] have a sense of self preservation, a sense of self awareness…"
• DMM by Pixelux – Digital Molecular Matter – Game Asset Synthesis Technology: "is a way of simulating the substance of objects, sort of pretending that their molecules"

Bonus footage #1 – Euphoria Engine Tech Demo

Bonus footage #2 – Digital Molecular Matter Tech Demo

I love it; such a simple paradigm shift unleashes so many possibilities.  If you don't agree, then check out his next video where he uses this same concept to provide a cheap alternative to both expensive electronic whiteboards and the upcoming Microsoft Surface, which is supposed to be priced between $5k – $10K. 

Because of the high interest in the project, but lack of resources to pursue it full time, Lee released the Wiimote whiteboard project as open source…another brilliant move.

I'm swamped with requests for compatibility fixes, requests for Mac and Linux versions. … and as much as I would love to be able to get this working in the hands of as many people as possible, I don't have the skills or time to do all this alone. So, here is my call for help. I have created a SourceForge repository for all WiimoteWhiteboard development.

Over at Cynergy Labs, they have also picked up on the minority report/Wiimote concept and put together a really nice, polished application using a pair of real minority report type gloves.  Thanks to my friend Karl Johnson over at Cynergy, for sending this one along. 

Cynergy Labs: Project Maestro

I love the fact that these type of breakthroughs are being created with a $30 Wiimote and $20 worth of parts from Radio Shack.

Microsoft Surface: $10,000

Wiimote: $30

Making Microsoft's Surface an overpriced, big ass table: priceless

As a bonus, check out Johnny's latest project on head tracking with the Wiimote for desktop VR display.  This is just freaking amazing and opens up a whole new can of worms. 

Combine majority desk, maestro, and head tracking VR together and you could be fully immersed in a productive 3D environment using a minority report interface.  Thanks Johnny Lee; I salute you.