Minority Report science adviser and inventor John Underkoffler demos g-speak — the real-life version of the film’s eye-popping, tai chi-meets-cyberspace computer interface. Is this how tomorrow’s computers will be controlled?

G-Speak is a really interesting concept. Right now I do not feel it is where it should be to be adopted on a broader scale: You need a certain environment with at least 2-3 square meters of space in front of a quite large screen.

I wonder if Microsoft will offer a extension to its Project Natal sensor some day — so that voice commands, body language and hand gestures create an immersive UI.

I can imagine that one day displays will cover complete walls so that you get a pretty cave-like situation. It is maybe time for another Display seminar?

Related posts:

1. Project Natal – the first true innovation from Microsoft I have been thinking about Project Natal over the weekend....
2. Project Natal Obviously Microsoft feels the need to claim back some market...
3. GPS + Compass + Motion sensors = Augmented Reality The new iPhone 3GS adds a compass to the set...

1) How can tools enable designers to create prototypes of ubiquitous computing interfaces?

2) How can design tools support the larger process of learning from these prototypes?

(Duration: 1 hour, 13 minutes; this is from Stanford’s HCI Seminar lecture series, February 2009; This is a more in-depth version of the talk Bjorn gave at Interaction 09)

Related posts:

1. Using HTML wireframes and prototypes “Julie Stanford has written an excellent article on using HTML...
2. Dynamic Speedometers The Stanford HCI Group is working on car dashboards that...
3. New Webmondays ahead! (Webmontag) There are new webmondays ahead in different cities in Germany...

Related posts:

1. Create screenshots with different browsers There are a couple of web applications out there that...
2. Music video milestones I am glad to see music video creators running formal...
3. DRM-free music from Apple? Here is an open letter by Steve Jobs about why...

The video demonstrates the potential advantages of navigating within a desktop interface with up to ten fingers, rather than via a single cursor:

[More on fastcompany.com]

Related posts:

1. Project Looking Glass fallacy Sun released a public version of their 3D desktop Project...
2. 3D desktop? Not again! Ingo Hinterding pointed to the SphereXP project and Sun’s Project...
3. Multi-touch screens Tobias Jordans pointed to a new astonishing video of a...

Microsoft is working on a new prototype that features a dual-screen called Courier. Here is a design mockup (published by Gizmodo) that shows how the device could look like:

Here is a discussion from TechViShow:

I’m am a little bit skeptical looking at the design mockup. And I think Microsoft should take a different course: finish the product in the lab and market it as “availbale now” instead of creating new vaporware.

Related posts:

1. Copenhagen UI concept Via blogblog: Here is a user experience concept study that...
2. Microsoft Design Microsoft has create a special website for recruiting designers for...
3. Donald Norman on mental models Here is an interview with Donald Norman about the concept...

NearestWiki for example displays WikiPedia entries about buildings and places in the vicinity.

NearestWiki is not the first augmented reality app for the iPhone, but it is the first that is not tied to a specific region or city (like Metro Paris)

Next versions of the iPhone may feature more precise sensors and a lower latency – giving a much better feeling (e.g. labels not jumping around in the scenery).

Related posts:

1. Reality & Real time I can receive MSNCB Europe and CNN Europe on my...
2. The iPhone principle Yesterday Apple introduced the new iPhone. It features a very...
3. Competing with the iPhone Ingo Hinterding wants to have a Plam Pre. The multi-touch,...

Introduction to HTML 5 from Brad Neuberg on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. Introduction to Apple Software Design Guidelines Apple posts some notes on developing software for Macs. Brent...
2. Copenhagen UI concept Via blogblog: Here is a user experience concept study that...
3. 10/GUI & con10uum 10/GUI (by Clayton Miller) is an novel approach to human-computer...

(see a demo on their site)

Google Wave is an integrated set of technologies (with protocols that allow semi-synchronous editing of outlines and their federation across several servers). With this approach Google Wave solves some difficult technical and infrastructural problems.

But it also generates some new problems that need to be solved to make Google Wave a success — otherwise I think users will not adopt the system (which in case of Google will set the seal on this project I suppose!).

1. Misty horizon

Google Wave is a frameworked solution for things people did not ask for and communication processes that no one is practicing yet (but no one has really “asked” for the mouse as input device either!). It is hard to see where Google Wave is going to be. This breeds creation, but it also challenges the non-developer. There will be best practices, but it will take a lot of time to identify use cases that people can learn “to wave” with.

So Google Wave challenges the imagination – and few people will be able to answer the “What is it all about?” question easily. The horizon is schrouded in mist.

Possible approach: A potential solution to this is to start with guided tours (a LOT of them) showing very common and powerful use cases for different scenarios. This is probably going to happen when Wave gets closer to the public beta.

2. Asynchronous patterns

We have learned to communicate in a turn taking fashion. It is polite to let someone speak until he has finished before starting to respond. It is not polite for everyone to speak up at any time. Waves allow people to reply or edit without obeying to the turn taking pattern. This can cause “stress” and also a lot of misunderstanding. People could reply to a text, that is going to change without them noticing that. Their reply suddenly become nonsense – the playback feature could become the only way to percieve a conversation properly. But playback is new – people have learned that the threaded view is a chronology – but in Google Wave it is not (or not necessarily).

Even with the playback feature, people need to become aware of the asychronicity in Google Wave – and learn how to recap conversations correctly.

Possible approach: Find a very good way to understand the chronology of a wave (e.g. making the playback as fundamental for navigation of a wave like scrolling)

3. Information (over)flow

While Google Wave may integrate many messaging systems – it also generates a lot of density. Means of communication that were apart from each other – using different URLs and applications for each – are now combined. The crucial part of that is to understand which option is suited for what purpose.

With Waves being set to “updated” by displaying them in bold typeface and sorting it to become a top item in the inbox, this also means that things are brought to my attention that should remain buried for a good reason. Google Wave users would have to learn how to manageund understand the “Inbox” and the “Active” areas properly, to be able to get the most out of it.

Possible approach: Allow users very powerful and fine grained control over the way they are informed about updates.

4. Scattered spaces and framgmented scopes

One of the things that really can make things too complex to be comprehended properly is that people can read & write to waves – but replies can extend or narrow the scope (e.g. who may read and reply to a new item. Who is reading? Who am I replying to? Is this part really private or not? Am I releasing a secret to the public accidentally?)

With a view from a different angle: What I can see within a wave may be different to what someone else is seeing. To make my communication appropriate to the situation I need to be able to “read” from a different standpoint. It is required to understand when communication could fail on the recieving end.

Whenever I want to understand the perspective of someone else – in need to be able to represent his/her view in my mind. The change of scope for parts of a wave within that wave can make this difficult.

Possible approach: Make any changes of the scope (e.g. recipient list) within a wave very visible and allow users to navigate them.

Related posts:

1. Google Maps Google Maps really seems to take off after offering their...
2. Google Maps via Flash Paul Neave shows how to integrate Google Maps with Flash....
3. Blogger & Google? I don’t know what the Google people had in mind...

You need to download a nightly build of the browser to see it working.

There are quite a number of applications for this I can think of. I wonder if this approach will be adopted by the W3C for a new CSS standard.

Related posts:

1. freshmeat.net adds Mac OS X section This is very good! Versiontracker and MacUpdate were the sources...
2. Apache Ant 1.5.1 »Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool, similar to make,...
3. Web 3.0? While everyone is talking about AJAX and JavaScript there is...

The video is more a vision than an actual feature presentation. But it is clear what the goals are.

Here is another Video from the demonstration that shows what is possible right now:

Related posts:

1. Project Natal – the first true innovation from Microsoft I have been thinking about Project Natal over the weekend....
2. Project Looking Glass fallacy Sun released a public version of their 3D desktop Project...
3. Publishing a project weblog John Udell: »A couple of years ago I predicted that...

Looks good. Would love to see more. I hope Microsoft comes up with some UI innovations in Windows 7 that really serve the user.

Related posts:

1. Copenhagen Consensus This week there is a conference in Copenhagen where scientists...
2. The concept of presence This is an interesting article about presence. A number of...
3. Former Microsoft employee switched Here is a little story of a former Microsoft employee...

There is a rough comparison chart on the Adobe site which compares Director to Flash. I am not quite convinced the advantages of Director over Flash will set it apart and (re-)create its own market (or re-create its former market). The ubiquity of the Flash plug-in, YouTube & Co, ActionScript 3 and Flex have brought a lot of seriousness to the Flash platform in the past 3-4 years.

Related posts:

1. libavg – Kiss Director goodbye? libavg is a very interesting package for multimedia installations: libavg...
2. Between life and death: There are just three design principles Students love to ask this question: “Is there any common...
3. Frontier: There’s life in the old dog yet Frontier 9.0.1 beta 2 is released. Seems UserLand has started...

Very interesting!

Related posts:

1. Open Source software lacks good interface design Michelle Levesque contemplates about the role of Interface Design in...
2. 2D interface for spacial design One of the most challenging issues for software user interface...
3. Future of Interfaces DesignReviver (via @blogblog) has compiled a categorial list of aspects...

Besides of that it also seems to be a very easy to use CMS for smaller and middle sized sites (although I suspect the UI is not very accessible). The documentation for developers seems to be very good as well. On the site there are demo movies, a list of user features and developer features – and a blog. If you like PHP and Smarty then Alahup is worth a look.

Related posts:

1. WorldKit I haven’t seen this application before: WorldKit WorldKit is an...
2. Google Maps via Flash Paul Neave shows how to integrate Google Maps with Flash....
3. Updgrade to Tiger I upgraded my PowerBook to the latest Tiger release. In...

I’d describe Pavel as some kind of “JotSpot Live with tinderbox-ish Notes” (see JotSpot Live and Tinderbox). The secret of the synchron updates of web pages between users is some code called LivePage. It is part of Nevow and that is part of Twisted (which is implemented with Python). Here is an article about Nevow. and some more detailed documentation as well. Twisted has become a grown up in the area of web application framworks. It is extremely powerful as it offers string modules & classes for almost anything you can do with a network attached to a computer. It offers ready made tools for activities many Ruby and PHP developers don’t even remotely heard about! Pavel is just an example.

Related posts:

1. AJAX-based editing online I had a chance to briefly check out these collaborative...
2. Tinderboxing at Engelbart Gordon Meyer had a good experience with Tinderbox while listening...
3. Tinderbox 3.6.3 One of the tools I love to use is Tinderbox....

Paul has also some other very nice experiments in his Flash lab.

Related posts:

1. Google Maps Google Maps really seems to take off after offering their...
2. Deforestation via Google Maps Google Maps offers an unprecedented view on the deforestation of...
3. Amazon Maps We have Google Maps, MSN Virtual Earth – now we...

Interestingly they offer blogs and tagging (they seem to have learned the lessons). The personal radio now can be used with a separate client (which is not yet available on OS X, so I can’t test it). Anyway Last.fm is a very useful way to get introduced to new music I probably like: I just have to browse the playlists of my neighbours.

I remember a similar feature back in the Napster days in 1999/2000: you could browse the music libraries of remote users that seem to share your music taste and learn about artists you never heard before. Last.fm and iTunes Music Store would make a good team. The “users that bought this also bought that”-pattern is too simple to be a real value.

Update: Last.fm just released an OS X Player.

Related posts:

1. Audioscrobbler Napster was not only hot because of the easy sharing...
2. Stanford on iTunes This is really great: While others are still resisting the...
3. DRM-free music from Apple? Here is an open letter by Steve Jobs about why...

Related posts:

1. Google Maps via Flash Paul Neave shows how to integrate Google Maps with Flash....
2. Deforestation via Google Maps Google Maps offers an unprecedented view on the deforestation of...
3. Amazon Maps We have Google Maps, MSN Virtual Earth – now we...

Tim Bruysten adds some context and links to an interesting project: Loopcity by Dietmar Offenhuber. Markus Neckar pointed me to the MacOS X menubar extra for Plazes by Martin Pittenauer. This makes it very easy to have the system announcing itself to the Plazes service (btw this is one of the developers of Plazes.com).

And Martin Röll said: nice but useless, yet. Maybe. Maybe not. Plazes does not really take much advantage from it’s data. I can’t see the contacts of my contacts for example. Uploading single photos via web form is not very nice. I envisage some kind of droplet (like the Flickr uploader) that will attach files to the current plaze or offer a comment browser/entry form when clicked. Also a screensaver displaying the latest comments and users of the current place and the palces nearby…

Related posts:

1. Location based services Until now the topic of »location based services« has been...
2. MacOS 10.2.5 Update out I just checked the software update control panel and found...
3. Switching this site to a CSS-based layout I am currently switching this site to a CSS-based layout....

First of all hardware: The problem if tagging information with geological locations could be solved by hardware very soon. Cheap GPS hardware could be integrated in mobile phones, digital cameras and laptops. In fact there is a rumor that Apple is going to integrate GPS hardware into the next generation of PowerBooks.

Secondly the applications: The geo-tagging of data creates a connection of the docuverse with the real world. Here are two examples: www.plazes.com and www.geobloggers.com. Once the hardware is capable of recording geological positions and automatically querying the net with locations applications like these will automatically emerge. It is creating a new dimension for data as such.

Related posts:

1. Location based services (update) A follow-up to yesterdays post: Tim Bruysten adds some context...
2. Creating and Consuming Web Services With PHP Creating and Consuming Web Services With PHP: Find out how...
3. Twisted based Weblog system Alan Green works on a Twisted based weblog system (see...