The Muskrat Ramble

I’ve been in San Francisco this weekend, caught up with David Merrill and his team (siftables) on Thursday. We had a great chat around where they’re at and when we’ll be able to start playing with a set of the blocks. I also got to see the siftables in action. My impressions follow…

1) The display on each brick is very sharp and has a high resolution. Like a mini, square iPhone.

2) The defining feature of a siftable is its ability to be aware of, and interact with,  its neighbours.  If you can think of a way to create an app that uses just one siftable, you’d be better off making it an iphone app. This is also why an iPhone emulator for siftables is not likely any time soon – iPhones can’t sense relative orientation and proximity to each other. Plus two siftables are far less expensive than two iPhones.

3) They are primarily targeting the mass-consumer entertainment/education markets. They are aware that there’s a whole class of apps that are for power users – e.g. the data viz type stuff we’re looking at doing, simulations, art, music, etc. However it’s hard to commercialise those applications vs. creating one “fun” game, or educational tool.

That said, he’s in agreement that they will make a powerful collaborative interface for data visualisation and analytics. As soon as they do a “run” of their beta version hardware, we’ll be getting a bunch.