Have you ever felt it’s harder to find something to watch on television now than it was when there were fewer choices? This can partly be attributed to the dilution of content quality, but a greater problem is that operating a television and discovering content is much more complicated than it used to be.

Television, Evolved

For fifty years, watching television was as simple as turning on the set and flipping through limited, regularly scheduled programs. Technological improvements have made this experience easier by eliminating the need to adjust your antenna, introducing remote controls, and adding geographically and topically diverse channels, among other advances.

The introduction of the VCR likely represented the first technological advance for television that also introduced significant user confusion. The advantages of recording a show and watching it at your own convenience are obvious, but the “TV/VCR” button that switched back and forth between scheduled and recorded programming baffled some users to the point of abandoning VCR technology altogether.

If you were to draft a profile for a UX thought leader, you'd likely come up with something that closely resembled Kim Lenox. Known for resetting the perimeters of everyday problem solving, Kim has devoted her career to making life—if not the world—better through user experience design.

Fresh from a three-week European speaking tour, Kim spent an hour on the phone with Tim Wood of EffectiveUI. They spoke about one of Kim's passions: the art, science and philosophy of mobile UX design.

I recently saw J.J. Abrams talk on TED, and was literally woken up to a reality “of the future” which, ironically enough, is happening now.

At some point he mentions that film making is now open for anyone who wants to do it. It no longer has to be done in studios and wrapped up in tremendous budgets. Anyone can grab a camera and start shooting.

I remember years ago – but not that many – anyone who wanted to create a short home movie, would literally be limited to creating something very “cheap” in every aspect. Either it be the quality of the end result or the “special” effects, it was always a “home” movie…

This has changed. Dramatically.

On May 3d, a new breed of movies was unleashed to the public. Not to say that this hasn’t been done before, it’s just the first time it has been done with Hollywoods’ consent.

I’m talking about The Hunt for Gollum which is self described as a “Independent film inspired by Lord of the Rings” and is based on the characters by J.R.R. Tolkien.

YouTube's latest features "namely annotations" bring a new level of interactivity to video online. The latest game is titled The Time Machine, and features an array of video clips which if viewed in the right order will complete the story. An earlier game with similar features was Samsung's Follow your instinct. Reminds me of the good ol days when I used to read those multiple timeline books