Thursday, July 19, 2007

Miro

Democrayplayer changed its name in Miro, which is better, I think. Democracy sounded too much like some politically-aligned stuff. I've nothing against polically-aligned stuffs, but just it's not the purpose of a free video player.

I tried it and I've got to say that it has improved, a little. Now the video plays and the audio plays as well. I remember that I tested it when it was still called democracy and I was able either to see video or to hear the audio, but not at the same time.

I feel the home page is getting cleaner, but it still is far from perfection. I notice that Miro's team choose the vertical alignment for the small previews of the "Popular", "Category" and "Just added" feeds.
I would prefer the horizontal alignment, just as iTunes does. And I would also change the "Just added" into a "Random feeds".

Moreover, the homepage continues below the previews. This part is useless because it's not visible and the user has to scroll down and because it contains no information that can not be reached other way.
For example you can reach the categories from the top bar
and just beneath the top bar there's a link for submitting channels.The only other information present in the lower part of the page are the Recent News, which can be added as a clip just as gmail does

I would also change the Video Search page: I would make it more web 2.0. The user should not be asked to choose where he/she wants to search in. If no option is given, Miro should search in any provider it knows and display information grouped by provider or by popularity or by resolution or by any other criteria suitable. If the user wants to refine the search, he/she can decide if he/she wants to search only in youtube, or google video, or whatever he/she likes.

Clearly it would be interesting to have some video-neighborhood features à-la-last.fm, for instance.