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| Televisions Becoming More Interactive; Mobile Computing Reaches Pivotal Juncture |
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posted by Editor
on Monday January 18, @07:10PM
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The television set is getting some significant interface enhancements. 3D televisions were the big story at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and some TVs are starting to integrate key applications such as Skype. Looking forward, MIT is working on screens that can detect 3D gesture input from viewers.
2010 will be a pivotal year for mobile computing. Now is when the key players for the decade will be defined, just as the PC industry was shaped in the early 1980's. Smartphones continue to surge in popularity, and Google's Nexus One and Apple's forthcoming iTablet/iSlate are some of the most-watched products in the industry.
The key question is whether Windows Mobile 7 will be able to restart Microsoft's lagging momentum in mobile computing when it finally ships, possibly as early as next month. Windows Mobile is certainly holding its own against the iPhone with IT managers in corporate computing. However, Wired argues that it was just this focus on corporate applications that may have cost Microsoft the mobile consumer market.
Meanwhile, some developers are focusing on applications for simple cell phones (i.e. non-Smartphones), which many users are quite happy with. Also, everyone seems to have an app store these days, so why shouldn't there be an app store for smart pens? Finally, has Second Life become an adults-only playground?
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| Using Creative Processes to Mine Scientific Data |
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posted by Editor
on Thursday November 19, @06:02PM
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This video from the Creativity and Technology (CaT) conference in New York this summer has an impressive demo of the AlloSphere at UCSB, an "instrument" for visualizing, hearing and exploring complex multi-dimensional data. The AlloSphere merges composed sounds and high resolution 3D visualizations of scientific data in an immersive space that is three stories tall (the demo also got a lot of attention earlier in the year at the TeD conference). While room-size CAVEs have existed since the early 1990's, earlier systems usually depended on some kind of head-mounted device for users to visualize data and hear sounds, which inhibited the interactive sensation. The AlloSphere is designed to provide a more neutral space, employing an echo-free chamber for representing the sounds of interaction. Construction of the system has not yet been completed, but the demo reel shows how its design takes interaction with data to a new level, vividly representing such behavior as chemical activity inside of the brain and the spin of electrons. The AlloSphere concept of artistically integrated, multi-sensory input still has to prove whether it will actually help enable researchers achieve new scientific breakthroughs, but if nothing else, it sure looks like a great way to perceive real-world phenomena.
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| Data Becomes Space With Zooming User Interfaces |
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posted by Editor
on Wednesday November 04, @08:50AM
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Users are becoming more comfortable with zooming interaction thanks to basic iPhone apps like its Safari web browser. With small screens becoming the most familiar form factor for a growing set of users, the time may be right for the rise of applications employing full Zooming User Interfaces (ZUIs), in which the Z-axis is connected with actual parameters such as data categories or time. Two strong tutorials explaining ZUIs have recently appeared with lots of links to examples. Gabriel Svennerberg
projects the rise of ZUIs, linking to this video of the Aurora concept interface for Mozilla (jump to 2:00 mins to see a great use of ZUIs for visualizing data). Dmitry from usabilitypost considers how ZUIs might work on the desktop, pointing out the Zoomism concept interface. Meanwhile, the Zoom Quilt continues to grow, with 33 artists now contributing immersive scenes for its zoomable space.
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| How Multi-Touch Interface Should Be Applied On Desktops |
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posted by Editor
on Sunday October 18, @06:41PM
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The multi-touch interface has been popularized in handheld form factors on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch devices, but how could it be applied on traditional desktop computers? 10/GUI is a concept for how multi-touch interfaces might work in a desktop environment. This video demonstrates how a multi-touch GUI can overcome some of the shortcomings of the current mouse-driven GUIs. Rather than allowing windows to overlap, tasks are lined up horizontally in the order they were invoked. Different classes of actions can be triggered depending on how many fingers are used at a time.
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posted by Editor
on Monday September 21, @05:52PM
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| Designer-Branded Notebooks, Wearable Video Recording, and Safety from Gadgets |
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posted by Editor
on Thursday September 17, @07:14PM
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At a preview in New York this week, technology vendors showcased products that they will be offering consumers this holiday season, providing a broad overview of the computing functions currently expected by mainstream users. The lineup included several instances of notebooks designed in collaboration with major designer brands, another attempt at wearable video recorders, and efforts to product users from excessive use of their own gadgets:
- Asus showed a notebook embossed with the Disney logo, and running a Disney-specific user interface that can be configured to restrict the allowable actions of its young users. HP showed a new edition of its notebook branded by fashion designer Vivienne Tam, and a new notebook inlaid with patterns from designer Tord Boontje, whose work is featured at the Museum of Modern Art.
- HP DreamScreen adds intelligence to the digital photo frame category with TouchSmart software, which provides real-time data feeds such as Facebook updates, Pandora music, and SnapFish photos.
- Pong Research showed a cell phone cover that reduces radiation by 60%, and iSpeech.org featured mobile phone software called drivesafe.ly that automatically performs text-to-speech conversion of text messages received while its user is driving. The software also automatically replies to senders that the receiver is driving, so they might consider waiting to send their next test message.
- Contour showed its wearable camcorder designed to capture first-person perspective videos of extreme sports, and allowing them to be easily shared with communities of users. It is bulkier than the old DejaView head-mounted system, but has the advantage of capturing video in HD quality.
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| Augmented Reality Taking Hold Through Smartphones |
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posted by Editor
on Thursday August 06, @07:22PM
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Here is the latest crop of developments related to emerging interface technologies:
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| Real and Virtual Worlds Converge with 3D & Mobile Interfaces |
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posted by Editor
on Tuesday May 19, @07:19PM
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Here are updates on recent developments around next-generation interfaces and usage models:
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| User Interface Trends for 2009 |
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posted by Editor
on Thursday January 08, @07:19PM
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As we enter the final year of the decade, no clear successor to the dominant PC desktop interface has yet emerged, but a few trends are showing some durability. With the impact of the iPhone and follow-ons such as Palm Pre, multitouch interface development is going into high gear as researchers look for ways to add touch sensitivity in displays that are both smaller and larger than devices with a mobile phone form factor. Not much new has appeared in the area of 3D user interfaces recently, but graphics hardware developers such as Nvidia are hammering away at 3D displays. Also, Apple has revealed some potential designs for 3D desktop software in a patent filing. Perhaps the most significant interface changes still lie ahead, as the web fundamentally changes the context through which users interact with information. The Semantic Web has still not broken out in the mainstream, even as mass media outlets such as CNN try to explain its benefits, but leaders such as Nova Spivack, the CEO of semantic web tagging service pioneer Twine, have a compelling vision of how user interaction will evolve in the web-centric era. In this insightful essay, The Future of the Desktop, he predicts that the browser will swallow up the desktop, evolving into a "webtop" that serves as the user's personal cloud. In this environment, the scarcest resources will no longer be storage or bandwidth, but attention.
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| Smartphones Help to Merge Virtual and Real Worlds as Market Competition Heats Up |
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posted by Editor
on Wednesday December 03, @08:00AM
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As the Smartphone market matures, researchers are showing how Smartphone proliferation may help to blur the lines between the real and virtual worlds. At the same time, work continues on the development of immersive interfaces, while the world still waits for the Semantic Web to break out in the mainstream with killer apps:
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Is the end near for the file/folder metaphor?
The superficial "look-and-feel" of an interface is distinct from the more fundamental issue of how it represents data to the user. In this regard, potentially dramatic improvements are possible.
Read More
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