Welcome voters! Check out the rest of the blog to learn more about Blossom.
Blossom has been getting great coverage in the media, in spite of Steve Wozniak’s hilarious freak MDA judge comment. Woz said ‘This would only be remotely entertaining if the plant was marijuana or opium and when you did certain things like actually work, you killed your crop…’
Ha! Well I think Kevin Rose actually took the time to read about Blossom and ‘get it’. He said ‘Very cool idea - although I’d simplify it a bit. I’d also love to see this applied my to-do list. The more tasks I complete, the healthier my plant.’ Done! thx!
MacBreak Weekly podcast at TWiT. Leo Laporte, Amber MacArthur, Scott Bourne, and Merlin Mann plug MDA and are all digging the Blossom app idea in this podcast.
New York Times Tech columnist David Pogue’s favorite!
apple.QJ.net “an intuitive and innovative [concept] application running on Mac OS X”
michaelmcracken.net “It needs a new name, but with the right design and art, I think it’d be a hit. ”
More: glennwolsey.com . rogis .net . vincent.van-wylick.com . del.icio.us link
“I would love to see Blossom actively developed, because this application would do dreams to my productivity, and I’m sure it would do the same for many others.”
Update: New Digg about Woz! Past digg users have been very positive. Slashdot user comments for the most part ripped on Blossom. It’s clear most of these users did not read much, with statements assuming MDA was an Apple project and thinking Blossom and Atmosphere were basically the same. However, I did find most informed reviews to be positive, like the podcast and blogs linked above.
To address some of the questions brought up:
First, Blossom leverages the psychological and emotional incentive of growing a plant. It’s similar to the psychology that drives us to finish a good game that we’ve started — the user becomes ‘invested’ in the plant, and wants to see it continue to grow.
Second, Blossom addresses the ’statelessness’ of todays windowed desktop. Turn on your computer and it generally just sits there, awaiting input. Yesterday and tomorrow have little influence on what we see. Time Machine in Leopard may help here, but it’s more for archival access rather than a self-analysis or productivity tool. Blossom will provide insight into one’s past work, and help predict what needs to be focused on for higher productivity in the future.
Third, Blossom can be turned off or on. It’s not ‘big brother’. It’s a self-motivation tool, and it facilitates, not coerces, productivity. The emotional connection with the plant will drive people to keep it on, much like the psychology that drives one to continue to play an engaging game.
And finally, Blossom ‘intellegence’ is based on each user’s workflow. Your own To Do list items feed the plant. Apps, folders, document types, or each document can be marked as healthy or not healthy for your plant. A great idea by one forum member was to create a p2p web-based database of Profiles of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ apps/doctypes, etc, based on work occupations. Eventually many catagories of specific work types would emerge. (even perhaps gamer friendly Profiles, if you work as a game tester for EA :). So it’s not just ‘Excel good, Safari bad’.
Hope that helps clarify Blossom a bit more. Thanks for any feedback, and Vote for Blossom!
