Daddy, What's a Mouse?

"Daddy, what's a mouse?"

"It's something that we used to point at objects on a computer screen"

"Just one thing at a time?"

"Yes honey."

"Wow! But how did you do this?"

[She resizes a square with two fingers and then touches the others to propagate the change]

"Well…in the past it was different. First you need to select all the objects you were interested in, by clicking in a space nearby, then dragging an imaginary rubber band around them all. If they weren't next to one another, then you needed to hold down Command on the keyboard while you clicked on each one. Then you would adjust the size of them with a separate control panel at the side of the screen. Or you might size one how you want, then press Command+C to copy, then Command+V to paste the squares…… are you listening?"

"No, sorry Daddy, that's all too technical for me. I don't know how you remembered all that in the old days!"

In the future, our children will all use rich multi-touch devices. They will look at the mouse & keyboard combination in the same way we today look at the Command Line Interface.

Amazing Avatar

A few days ago I saw Avatar in 3D. Wow. The technical and artistic use of 3D in this film is phenomenal. And the result is the most comfortable 3D movie viewing experience I've ever had.

Asus Puts Computer in Keyboard

This Eee Keyboard contains an entire computer, which you can hook up to various monitors/TVs or simply use the included touchscreen (which works sometimes). Looks very similar to Apple keyboards, In Chinese. I predict some future version of this, perhaps all touchscreen, will become a major segment of computing form factors. Via Gizmodo.

Click to read more ...

Sony Gets on the 3D Controller Bandwagon

Sony today demoed their upcoming Playstation 3D controller, which integrates with their existing video interface, EyeToy. Fast forward past the uncomfortable engineers introduction, and you'll find an impressively accurate and subtle prototype game controller demo. I particularly like the merging of real-life video and computer generated tools/weapons.

Technically speaking, I'm guessing Sony's new controller uses refined version of existing technologies including image-tracking of the round wand-top, Wii-like accelerometers and potentially 3D radio telemetry. At at guess, the slightly-dorky sphere helps Eyetoy differentiate between wands, and the wands from the background by a imperceptible synchronized flicker. What I do like about this type of system is it's low-latency and high precision, which according to the video is "sub millimeter". What I don't like about the system is that it still needs to makes guesses about how you're holding the device, and so your avatar/character may not be displayed to match.

Doubtless, the Wii is fast-tracking all games companies' 3D research and designs — but in different directions. Wouldn't it be great if the above technologies were combined with 3Dcamera technology as displayed by Microsoft? Low resolution, but comprehensive 3D imaging will be provided by the camera, with high resolution and low-latency data being provided by the controller. On the other hand, given Moore's Law, we may soon see 3D cameras approaching current 2D camera resolution. High resolution 3D data, in conjunction with sub-millisecond parallel processing Xbox/PlayStation/OpenCL computational power might match the data quality these current controllers provide. Richer input (squeeze) and haptic feedback (sharp knocks as swords collide) might be physical controller's saving graces.

Click to read more ...

Microsoft Announces 'Natal' 3D System

Microsoft has announced at this years E3 Games conference a new peripheral/system coming next year for the XBox called 'Natal'. They've got some slick prototypes/ studio mockups which show people interacting with games and other applications in a very convincing manner. The technology is based on 3D camera technology which I've previously discussed, and it's good to see it coming to the fore. Microsoft certainly thinks it's a big deal, pulling out Spielberg and Peter Molyneux to talk up the future.

The promotional material implies that they've got some extra processing turning 3D camera bitmap images into models of the human body to be passed to the game itself. Perhaps this processing is the source of the lag between the person and the on-screen action in the video on this page, which I'm guessing is a real prototype. And too much lag and you end up with a cognitively tiring game. The system also boasts speech recognition — I'm skeptical on how effective that will be you're yelling at the screen. Overall, this new 3D system promises awesome new interaction possibilities, but given the huge hype, expect some post-natal depression if it doesn't meet expectations.
UPDATE: Natal now has a website.

Click to read more ...

Microsoft's Future Home

BBC coverage on the Microsoft Future Home, a mockup of what future living with Microsoft 24/7 might be like.

Click to read more ...

Bumptop is Cool

If you hadn't, erm, bumped into it before, then check out this Windows application. Bumptop is a very cool file management application. It's animated and "pretty", but there is substance to this style. I particularly like the piechart contextual menu.

Click to read more ...

UI Design and The Environment

I was having a chat with a friend yesterday in my favourite cafe, Cream. We got on to the topic of the environment, and it's future. How do us computer guys and gals (he is a web coder) affect the environment? What could we change about our industry? What's our impact on Global Warming?

The Positives
On the one hand, I can feel proud of the software industry, with it's trend to download-distribution, saving in the manufacture and disposal of bound paper stacks aka manuals and polycarbonate and aluminum discs, aka DVDs. Less waste = good.

Also, I believe communication tools like our own Skitch application and site may mean people have less need to travel in order to work with a colleague. Or perhaps travel to the office four days a week, rather than five. After all, my company has people working in Australia, Europe and America and we work with people in South America, Japan. And no office building on any continent.

The Negatives
But on the other, dirtier, hand, the Macbook I am typing this on will probably be replaced in 1, 2 or 3 years. And even in the broader community, aside from dedicated tasks, computers are not much good beyond 10 years, or less. Once deemed worthless, a computer's intermingled parts are incredibly difficult to recycle. Only in recent years have makers like Apple reduced their use of PCBs, heavy metals and other substances.

Looking Forward
Building better tools for people to communicate, and make more effective use of their time and travel seems environmentally sound. What else? How can I, and the people in my industry have a more positive environmental impact?

Some 'out there' brainstorming:

• Hide the Print feature
• Build virtual communication technologies into every application
• Have applications Sleep when not being used to save some CPU cycles
• Build applications which can run on low, and recycled computers
• Create software to help upcoming countries manage their manufacturing and agriculture industries better
• Build applications to help people manage their home electrical, water, heating and recycling needs
• Apply pressure to hardware manufacturers by allowing software to only run on 'environmentally certified' machines. DRM for the environment?
• Encourage game creators to write software which pools the communities effort like the ESP game, rather than disposing of it like Solitaire

Click to read more ...

Time as Interface Element

Time. Software is increasingly focussed on helping us understand and manage it. For a great example, see the unreleased Palm Pre; it's diary view shows spare time in a beautifully simple 'crumpled' concertina UI. So, how do other UIs handle time?

Temporal Interfaces
Lukas Mathis' blog, ignore the code, recently covered some mockups of current, and possible temporal interfaces. Including one from this blog :-) One of the examples showed how the file 'list view' could better serve temporal thinking.

My Take
Lukas' approach inspired some thoughts of my own on the problem of representing time visully. I've put Lukas' original example topmost with my iterations below; if an item is separated in time from the other items — and since we seem to think about time in a spatial way, how could we show this spatially? (click for fullsize)

I like the 3rd, 'peaks' iteration as it reminds me of something I saw in Norway — a 'Give Way' line evoking a steep slope, big bear teeth, or sharp spikes. "Slow Down!" It seems a nice visual metaphor for time.

How else could time be shown spatially in this context?

Another conversation for another day: missing UI metaphors for working with (as opposed to simply understanding) elements which travel through time. We can tell it's a problem because people are going to the effort of devising complex workarounds. For example, the 37signals crowd has a nifty solution for throwing emails forward in time.

Click to read more ...

Future Computer Videos

Created by Bruce Branit.

Microsoft Labs' work.

(viaReleaseCandidateOne)

Click to read more ...