Like many people out there I like to think of myself as a “web-geek” and “early-adopter”.
Ever so often I go to geeky events to soak up the atmosphere and shoot the breeze with my fellow early adopting friends. It was during one of these events that I learned about “headup” and met Tal Keinan – one of its founders. Tal and I chatted a bit and he gave me an invite code for the application’s private beta.
Installing the headup extension on my browser
The thrill of knowing that you are one of the first people to try out a new website/gadget/service makes the words “private beta invite code” irresistible bait for early-adopters like myself. Naturally I couldn’t wait to get back home to redeem the invite I’d just received. I installed headup’s Firefox add-on with tingling fingers and restarted my browser. I was redirected to headup’s post-installation page where I was prompted to visit select web-sites to see how headup enhances the experience they deliver. One of the sites suggested was last.fm.
My headup experience on last.fm
Although I have a last.fm account, I never quite figured out what to do with it. This, to my mind, made it an ideal candidate for my 1st headup experience.
I signed in to my last.fm account and immediately noticed that the (few) artists I had bothered to add to my account were underlined by a dashed orange line:
headup underlines objects it identifies - like bands and artists
Since I happen to know the DJ-duo “Pacotek” personally, I was interested in seeing what discoveries headup would have to offer me about them. I moved my cursor over their underlined name and a little “loader” icon appeared. Personally I love hover interactions so headup scored its first point here:
the headup loader indicates something is about to happen
After half a second headup’s menu popped up above my last.fm profile page and offered me a selection of tabs related to specific types of content:
The addon's interface hovers over the browser
As an artist and designer I tend to be drawn to visual media, so naturally I clicked on the label “Photos”. The tab opened and let me browse thumbnails of photos semantically related to Pacotek (my initial query subject):
headup
I found a picture I liked and clicked on it. headup then displayed the full-size photo within the application while still hovering above my last.fm page.
headup delivers content within the application without interfering with browsing
It was at this moment that I began to feel the excitement one experiences upon discovering something really cool. It dawned on me that what I was doing was discovering meaningful relevant online content outside the structural constraints I had come to associate with “browsing the Web”. I was following up on my interests and I was completely freed from the constraints posed by web-pages and the links that connect them. The icing on the cake was that although I was viewing content that was highly relevant to me I never had to actively search for it…
headup served me stuff I enjoyed without requiring any action on my part
I think that this googly age has led us to accept “searching the Web” as a necessity.
headup’s greatest innovation is that it questions this premise:
Why search for something if it can be delivered to your doorstep?
headup helped me understand that “searching” is NOT a prerequisite for discovering meaningful and enjoyable content. In fact I suddenly realized that having cool content “find” you is not only far more natural, it’s also much more FUN…
Epilogue
Ever so often in life you are presented with a chance to be part of something grand and exciting. As I sat in front of my computer realizing the implications of what I had just experienced, I knew that this was one of those moments, and I also knew that I wanted to be part of making this a reality for everyone.
Three weeks later I joined the headup team…
That’s all for today!
For headup invitations contact me via @headup on twitter, or directly (miked[at]semantinet[dot]com)
Catch you later…
: )
Mike
Creative Marketing – headup.com
We were rather surprised and even slightly amused by the buzz generated by our choice to base headup on