Imagine this scenario: You're at Bevmo standing in front of a wall of red wine. There are thousands of bottles from hundreds of producers you've never heard of from dozens of countries you've never visited. You'd like to get something good for tonight's dinner party, but you're just not a wine expert. Wouldn't it be nice to know what your guests would like? Maybe you have a colleague who's practically a sommalier, but you wouldn't bother her with a phone call at this time of day.

Enter Goodrec. When the founders explained the concept for Goodrec, I knew I wanted to work on it (we helped them with the UI and brand ID). The concept is simple: Create a super efficient UI that lets people quickly enter recommendations for restaurants, books, etc. So, it's fast to enter the recs and it's even faster to find them.

You can see the product at www.goodrec.com. It will be invite-only for a while, buy you can probably find an invitation if you look hard enough.

posted by Frank

Our latest interaction design hatchling is now running loose; Roost is the newest entrant in the real estate search space. When they hired us to do the interaction design, they were looking for a way to bring the Kayak and FareChase flavor (ie: powerful filters & interface) to the home buying process.

One of our biggest innovations was also the biggest challenge. Roost decided to skip the usual "build-your-own" database strategy and partner directly with the MLS data providers. This gives Roost property data that's light years ahead of their competitors. But it was accompanied by some major interface challenges due to some fairly detailed constraints on the presentation of said data.

Anyway, the end result turned out nicely in my opinion (and this guy's too). Roost's initial markets include: Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, Boston, and several others. Check it out.

posted by Frank

MediaMaster has just passed a big milestone - 10 million  21 million uploaded songs!

Actually, 10,057,527  21,000,000... and climbing quickly (according to neil). I think this product is on to something and I'm looking forward to the next major version, which is in the works.

posted by Frank

I'm excited to announce the launch of Fanlib.com. I worked very closely with this team to identify, scope, and design a rich set of features for an alpha release that is now in its public beta.

Fanlib is designed to be the best way to discover, share, and manage fan fiction online. Certainly, this site is already leaps beyond it's competition with features such as: tagging, faceted search, quicklists, custom themes, subscriptions, comments, forums, and more.

One of my favorite features is this widget that you can embed in your blog to promote your (or someone else's) fanfics. This is a quick story that I wrote about Han Solo and Chewbacca.

Not into Star Wars? Here are some other popular "fandoms":
* Harry Potter
* Lord of the Rings
* Lost
* Spiderman

posted by Frank

TechCrunch is kinda like Oprah for web geeks. Today, MediaMaster was featured on TechCrunch and the feedback, traffic, buzz, etc. has been very exciting.

So, what did people say about MediaMaster's UI (designed by yours truly) in the comments area? Well, since you asked...

"I just signed up and loving its UI!..." -Avinash
"I just signed up too. I have to say that this is one of the cleanest UIs I've discovered in a web 2.0 app." -John

Ka-chow! But seriously, I dont' know these people. Though, I have the urge to buy them a drink...

posted by Frank