It doesn’t happen often enough, but once in a while it’s nice to discover a new blog that keeps you interested. So if you haven’t been to Jeff Monday’s blog yet, Mondaydots you should. To summise, Jeff explains sometimes complex theories simply. Which is good for people like me, who have the attention span of a 4 year old.

One of his most recent posts is on information gaps.

In his words: “It works like this: when we come across something new that is not explained by our previous knowledge or experiences, an information gap is formed. If you are a designer, creator or communicator, understanding how to use this gap will have great rewards.

It amazes me how many new product developers, marketers, and advertisers create the wrong sized gap. They either create a “me too” product or service which creates an information gap that is too small and uninteresting. Or they let their engineers and creatives add wild, bloated, and unnecessary “features”, and create a huge information gap that inspires fear over the size of the gap and size of the of the learning curve”.

I love this because it’s so bloody true. I know I keep using Apple analogies here [sorry] but they are very good at introducing new technologies that create medium sized information gaps, the iPad being it’s latest example. It’s like a laptop but different. It’s like a netbook but different. It’s like a magazine but different. It’s like your Mac book or iPhone but again different in some way.

At the other end of the scale you have Microsoft creating information gaps that are too small with minor product iterations (Natal excluded) and Google are arguablly creating ones that are too big like Buzz and putting everything in the cloud [100% stolen/inspired by Wired]

Then there are those that create information that are so big you can’t compare it to anything.

Think of Internet service providers and telcos banging on about how many gigabytes I can get. Now I know 1 isn’t much and 150 is a hell of a lot more than 1, but what does that actually give me? How many movies can I download? How much talktime can I get on Skype?