All in all, it's pretty simple. Just sign in with your Google account, drop in your credit card digits and tell 'em where to send your card. (Oh, and yes the 200GB is a yearly subscription. So the first year pays for itself, to be more precise.) [Google]

Apple has every right to be proud of the fact that it got its act together, and everything that was all herky jerky back in July 2008, when the $99-per-year MobileMe launched, is now working as billed. The push email shows up immediately, if you use your me.com account. Ditto for the push contacts and the push calendar, though you can't use web cals like Google's or Yahoo's if you want to be super synced. The gallery works great; as a dad I upload tons of pictures and videos to the MobileMe gallery right from iPhoto, but with iPhoto '09, I can upload them to my free accounts at Facebook and Flickr too. There's even iDisk, a smoothly integrated 20GB cloud storage service, which now has a public drop box for file sharing, just like YouSendIt. And if you have a time capsule NAS/wireless access point, you can remotely access your disk using mobile me, as well as use back to my mac remote desktop control. (The service tracks the dynamic IPs of all your machines, so each machine can always keep track of the others.)

Maybe you're catching on to the real problem here. It's not just that you "free" junkies who read Gizmodo wouldn't be caught dead paying $100 for anything but a 50" flat-panel TV. It's that the service itself is made up of many pieces you already have. This presents a complicated economic argument: If you already have an online photo gallery and a free or company-given email account that you like and use, why would you pay to have those things twice, just to get contact syncing for your phone and a decent online storage system. Wouldn't you go find a less elegant online storage system for a lot less money, and content yourself with syncing your phone to your computer's address book every couple of days?

I said that the service worked as billed, and it does. My favorite component is the contact syncing, because anytime I add anything on my phone or my computer, the two are instantly in sync. But I'd achieve the same result, with less magic, if I remembered to sync my iPhone every so often.

I did have one problem with contact syncing, but I bring it up mainly to tell how easy it was to fix: I had imported a bunch of contacts from email accounts online, and some contacts got corrupted along the way. I had 18 contacts, out of 250 or so, that wouldn't sync from Mac to iPhone or MobileMe web portal. The fix was easy: Go in and change something about the entry, like adding the person's company name or a fax line, even their kid's name. As soon as you tweak the entry, boom, it gets uploaded.

Most other exchanges in MobileMe have been without incident, even exporting my Google Cals in a big bunch, then manually importing them into iCal from time to time. But the very fact that I use MobileMe for some services and free web apps for others, and the fact that I am in many cases the one making sure everything talks to everything else, underscores the point I'm making, that MobileMe is a confederacy of programs that have nothing to do with each other.

In the end, even after it's working well, it's difficult to recommend for two reasons: The money, which I've sufficiently covered above—a hefty sum when contrasted to free web-based simulacra—and the compatibility, not with your device "ecosystem" but with everybody else. Who uses iCal or Me.com mail? Google wins those battles for sure. Even though I swear by MobileMe Gallery, most people I know prefer Flickr, or just Facebook.

There's a solution. Apple could offer some things for free, and some things cheap. Just bought iLife '09 or a new Mac? Guess what, you get to upload your photos to a MobileMe Gallery. Buying an iPhone? Syncing your contacts and calendar is a $2/month add-on. I think iDisk could easily be a success at $25/year, all by itself, as long capacity goes up each year automatically based on capability. It's not like these component parts have anything to do with one another anyway.

My mother-in-law recently switched to a Mac after eons on a PC. I looked over her shoulder as she was placing the order, and when we came to the part where she could get MobileMe at the low introductory price of $70, she asked me if she should. I thought for a second, and realized the answer was no. I may keep her grandkid's pics on MobileMe Gallery, but she's perfectly happy with Picasa, and there's a beta version of that for the Mac out now. For free. [MobileMe]

Undo send, sadly, only has a five-second window to take it back (you can boost it to 10), so you better have excellent reflexes. Previews work a lot like the image preview you're used to. Here's the YouTube preview in action: [Gmail Blog, Cnet]

Feature for feature, Picasa for Mac is almost exactly the same as its Windows and Linux counterparts. The organization paradigm is exactly the same, as is the interface (which, it bears mentioning, somehow still looks natural in OS X). Even the automatic system-wide photo indexing worked fine, as did a few different camera imports.

The program still carries Google's increasingly meaningless "Beta" tag, but judging by my brief testing, it's ready to go. [Google—Thanks, Ryan]

The RSS headlines can be overlaid on the photos, as can a clock. As you can see above, Sony has eschewed tacky photo frame styling for a sleek, minimal look, which makes the somewhat steep price tag hurt a bit less. The network, RSS and audio streaming are welcome additions to normal frame fare, but as the sole widgets on this $300 frame, they are as much reminders that this apparently capable hardware is being underutilized as they are useful features. The CP1 will be available at Sony Style stores and online sometime in mid-October. Full press release below. [Sony]

DENVER (CEDIA Booth #600), Sept. 3, 2008 ⎯ Sony today unveiled the wireless VAIO® CP1 Wi-Fi photo frame, making it easier than ever to share digital images as well as receive news and stream Internet radio in real-time.

Utilizing built-in Wi-Fi technology, the CP1 model lets you stream photos from a VAIO PC directly to the device. Featuring more than 16 million colors and 800x480 resolution, photos locked away on your PC will now come to life on the photo frame’s brilliant 7-inch LCD screen.

In addition to streaming images from a VAIO PC, the CP1 model can also connect to Google™ Picasa™ web albums. This enables you to view up to four web albums simultaneously, as well as upload photos directly to a Picasa account.

“How many times have you uploaded images to our PC— vowing to share them— never to see them again,” said Xavier Lauwaert, product manager for VAIO product marketing at Sony Electronics. “This new frame provides an easy way to retrieve and share these precious memories that otherwise would have been forgotten.”

In addition to its ability to wirelessly access photos, the CP1 model can display images from compatible Memory Stick® media, SD cards or digital still cameras providing instant access to your latest shots. It is also CompactFlash® media card-compatible, making it convenient for those who use a digital SLR camera.

And with 128MB internal storage, up to 100 digital images can be saved directly to the new photo frame for viewing anytime.

Keeping your images and slideshows organized is easy as well. Content is grouped into sections called “frames,” making it easy to enjoy photos, information and music. You can choose from Slideshow— for movie-like presentations, Flow— which creates a slideshow with fun, special-effects, and Dissolve— a more traditional view that fades images into one another.

It also has an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader built-in, which enables it to grab news headlines and entertainment content from the Internet and display it along with your slideshows. Operating in real-time, the RSS function provides you up-to-the-minute information.

The new CP1 model also features built-in stereo speakers and an Internet radio player for enriching slideshows with your favorite style of music.

Other features include a digital/analog clock and the ability to save energy by dimming the screen automatically when a room’s lights are turned off.

The VAIO CP1 digital photo frames will retail for about $300. They will be available at Sony Style® stores and online at HYPERLINK "http://www.sonystyle.com/cp1" www.sonystyle.com/pr/cp1 starting in mid-October.

If It Feels Good: Skateboarding toward the future of digital user interfaces

When I'm not busy creating user-interface prototypes, I'm co-director of the local Public Skatepark Action Committee. The two gigs aren’t as dissimilar as you might think; a skatepark, after all, is just a user interface for skateboarders, and one with a lot of design challenges. But instead of dealing with code, I have to think in terms of steel and concrete. On one side you have a myriad of choices from prefab to design-built concrete and steel. On the other side you have vocal “consumers” that will let you know when you get their UI wrong—leaving you with an empty park marked up with free, um, “market research reports” in spray paint.

Anyone using, designing or selling a product with a digital user interface can identify with this scenario. Not that someone will walk into Best Buy and tag “This MP3 Player UI Sucks”—at least not anyone who wants to stay out of jail. But just as new trends in construction have changed skatepark design, so, too, has technological progress enabled us to build better UIs. This is helping us design products—whether it be skateparks or game controllers– that don’t just look good, but feel good, too.

Devices are getting more powerful, and buzzing technologies (like AJAX and many other acronyms I won’t make your eyes glaze over by listing here) are allowing designers to create new possibilities from better-looking designs to rich animation.

These technologies are demand driven, sparked by the trend away from modular solutions–easily configured, pre-produced pieces (whether they be pieces of code or pieces of a ramp)–into more engaging and full experiences. Skateboarders are already onto this trend. There are nearly as many devoted to fighting modular skateparks as there are building them.

These new technologies focus on the ability to create custom UI experiences, and with good reason. Both iTunes and Google’s photo application Picasa quickly attracted fans by breaking from the standard controls and interface you find on most Windows-based applications. This is not merely another skinning trend; both applications also employ unique control behaviors and animation. As technology enthusiasts we have all experienced the attraction and perils of animation (“skip intro,” anyone?). Animation allows sexiness and innovative ways of navigating around a screen, but also runs the risk of simply adding unnecessary, time-consuming clutter to our devices.

The skatepark gives us a tangible reference. Think in terms of “feel.” As the skateboard wheel rolls across a park, surfacing, smoothness, transition radius and other factors are not processed consciously by the skater, but are reduced to a single subconscious impression of user satisfaction; an overall impression of how the park “feels.” In the case of browsing menus on a set-top box like TiVo, the equation for “feel” will include things like timing, transitions, and even inertia and elasticity.

In terms of timing, anyone who has skated a bowl with too much flat bottom (or used a Sony Ericsson T300) knows that slow responsiveness is a design flaw that can totally kill the user experience. The same can be said for animation in UI. Transitions should never block the experience or the information a user is seeking. A common complaint among cell phone users, for example, is animations that harm the UI. A quick search of “slow UI” in Google yields many such gripes, including an entry from mobile-review.com that simple states: “LG U8180 very slow UI.”

Effective use of animation in UI is not arbitrary. For instance, the menu transition from the right to left on a TiVO or an iPod helpfully implies that navigation to the left will take me backwards. Gadgets that use an animated transition just because their hardware can finally support it run the risk of annoyance once the novelty wears off. Better still is UI that incorporates simulated physics. Take the Picasa Scroller. The further you pull down, the quicker it snaps back into place. This elasticity naturally communicates its relationship to moving you through the library; the “harder” you pull, the faster you scroll photos.

In the not-too-distant future, that elasticity will be more than simulation. Haptic technologies–those dealing with the sense of touch, like force feedback mice and attenuated asymmetrical offset direct current motors– will actually give the UI “feel.” There are a lot of haptic devices available now for gamers, from steering wheels to the Xbox 360 controllers. But the technology is becoming more than vibrating motors. Soon you’ll know you are committing an important change to a document not because a dialog prompts, but because the cancel button is physically harder to push and has a longer throw, like the main power switch on your house. Cell phones will have jog dials that will be paired with animation, and will let you know with a moment of resistance as you pass each item in your address book; it will then stiffen and stop as you approach the end of a list. We won’t just look at the user interface, we’ll feel it—the same way a skateboarder feels a concrete transition.

As gadgets gain more animation and the feel of haptic technologies, designers will need to start thinking like the builder of a skatepark. Incorporating flow, feel, transition and speed, not just look and layout, will bring consumers enhanced usability and build an emotional connection between users and their gizmos.

Jared Ficklin is a Senior Design Technologist in frog’s Austin, Texas studio.

The frog Design Mind column appears every Monday on Gizmodo. Read more frog Design Mind.