Google Buzz is the straw that broke my back
Wow, too much social media today.
My initial impressions: Buzz is pretty cool. It’s far more personal than Twitter and even more accessible. Maybe it even collects all my media together (which should ideally help dearly in a situation like this); but seriously, unread badges are the worst interaction design element ever*, and I think I have finally reached the point where I have too many of them.
So, I’m checking out for a while. I’ll be back soon.
* Unread badges are simply bad design.
I’m going to explain this now, because I know I’ll get crap for it: the problem with unread badges is that they are all designed to draw attention and denote importance (after all, most are bright fucking red), but the number scale that each one uses is completely wrong, because it focuses on quantity and not quality. Three (3) important email messages from friends/coworkers are much more critical to me than fifteen (15) mailing list emails, and yet an unread badge count implies 5x the opposite.
