The Rise and Rise of the Indie Mac/iOS Developer Conference

A good friend of mine is on the team of an upcoming indie-run iOS developer conference called Swipe.

It looks great. And it seems like a worldwide trend:

Melbourne, Australia: Swipe Conference  - Sep 5th

Brighton, UK: Update Conference  - Sep 5th

Denver, USA: 360iDev - Sep 11th

Edinburg, Scotland: NSScotland  - Oct 1

Massachusetts, USA: Voices That Matter  - Nov 12

Alternative 'TouchType' Text Input Approach

touchtype proposes a new approach to text input on a touchscreen. It takes predictive text to another level — suggesting a list of words which you are probably going to type next. With each letter you input, the list is updated. The application is not yet available, so I've not had an opportunity to play with it, but it does look reasonably good.

However, it seems to me that treating touchscreens like a real-world keyboards is flawed from the start. This is because the strengths of touchscreens is hi-resolution, real time positioning data for any finger dragging along the glass. The weaknesses of touchscreens is that initial point of touch — the system basically has to a) second guess where you meant to touch b) second guess that you mean to tap at all. I would propose an interaction where you only lift your fingers for unusual events, and design the system to be almost totally controlled from dragging on an XY plane. Swype gets closer to this idea of continuous input — we're well overdue for a change, as I've written about before.

via touchusability.com

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Better in Touch with Touch Interfaces

New innovation in Opera Labs Fingertouch, a dynamic interface element designed for fingertips seems initially good. I don't like the unpredictability of the interface though — "will this touch on a dense list of elements bring up another interface? Or is this my only chance to hit the right thing?"

One solution might be to overlay a box on elements which will open the Fingertouch interface.

And if you're on a Mac, and developing iPhone (or other touchscreen apps) you might like to try out the free PhoneFinger application from wonderwarp. It makes the experience of hitting a tiny button with your 'virtual finger' just about as hard as it is in real life, by turning your cursor into a giant hand. Note: I am experiencing some crashing with the app, which I think relates to moving between single and dual-screen setups.

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