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.

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.

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.

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

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...

At this year's IA Summit (March 22-26, Las Vegas), I'm going to participate in an interesting panel discussion with several other IAs-turned-entrepreneurs. Christina Wodtke, Lou Rosenfeld, Lane Becker, Gene Smith, and I will each present a short case study about our experience starting our own companies. The panel will be led by the fabulous Victor Lombardi of MIG fame.

My presentation will cover some of my experience starting My Picturebook. The good, the bad, and the fugly...

I've been working with a startup called "MediaMaster" for the last couple of years. We've designed and built a platform for storing and playing your "music in the cloud". A simple way to think of it (if you're a geek) is that we're building the "hotmail" of music with, of course, some web 2.0 flavor added to the mix. This is just the beginning of some cool things to come from MediaMaster.

The widget embedded above is pulling from my actual music collection and giving you a glimpse into the types of tunes I groove to while I work. Hmmm. Maybe this isn't such a good idea... heehee

We also created a slick little Flash-based player to manage and play your music (screenshot below). Go to www.mediamaster.com to sign up for an account.

I'm happy to announce the launch of our newest business SafetyDriversEd.com. Safety Driver's Ed is a new venture collaboration between Bay Area Driving School and Ramirez Design.

We believe that we have created the most engaging and informative program available (seriously!). Our course was developed from scratch, based on many years of in-classroom and behind-the-wheel training. It contains original illustrations, quizzes, videos, and animations that will keep teenagers engaged while they learn (which was the most important factor to us).