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Sony Shows Off Primitive Surface Computer, Pats Self On Back

Ryan Whitwam — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:47:14 -0600

Color us a little confused by this one. Sony has been showing off a surface computer of sorts. The system was constructed with Atracsys and utilizes a camera to track the locations of your fingers, meaning you don’t have to physically touch anything. For some reason, it’s being shown off on a table top… that you touch.

Sony/ Atracsys also showed how the camera system can track facial movements and even calculate mood. The point seems to be that you could interact with a computer without actually touching it. This would be invaluable in an operating room, for example, where sterility must be maintained. Sort of like Natal on the Xbox, apparently. Despite what they’re saying the camera tracking is capable of, Sony is making it look like a glorified Microsoft Surface. Check out the story link above to see the demo video.

Sneak a Peek at Leaked Photos of Microsoft's Courier Interface

Ryan Whitwam — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:23:15 -0600

A series of images have shown up online that purport to explain how the mysterious Microsoft Courier interface works. They consist of some professional looking diagrams and illustrations of the Courier device from the previously leaked videos.

The docs indicate that the unit will have multitouch gestures for actions like opening apps, and zooming. There’s a pen as well. It has two buttons, an eraser, and a twist mechanism to access different functions. Courier’s “home screen” is called the Smart Agenda. It displays email, weather, to-do lists, and any active items in the journal. Almost any content the device can access can be “clipped”, and stored in the journal.

There are also numerous references to “the cloud” in these images. They say that any part of your journal can be shared with the cloud. People can instantly comment on these portions via a web browser. Speaking of browsers, the courier has one, and it actually looks nice. Pages are organized like a stack of note cards to flip through.

While this may be vaporware, it is very attractive vaporware. Let’s hope it actually exists.

Skype Announces Open Source Client for Linux

Jason Barry — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:07:15 -0600

Skype announced that an open source version of the Linux client is currently under development in a blog post by Stanislav Karchebny. “There's an open source version of Linux client being developed. This will be a part of a larger offering, but we can't tell you much about that right now," wrote Karchebny.

The original Linux client had been released several years ago, but a new open source client could mean community focused developments. Skype expects that “having an open-source user interface will help us get adopted in the multicultural land of Linux distributions, as well as on other platforms, and will speed up further development.”

Within the comments of the post, users were hoping to see Skype also unlock the Skype Protocol to the open source community. Unless that is part of the “larger offering”, that Karchebny mentions, it appears for the moment that their plans are to open only the source to client interface.

Users are already clamoring for a launch date.

Everyone Stay Calm, Firefox is Not Adopting the Microsoft Ribbon

Jason Barry — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:47:37 -0500

Alex Faaborg set the record straight on his user experience blog for Mozilla about Firefox 4.0 coming standard with a ribbon interface. There were a slew blogs, tweets, and news articles saying that the latest Firefox would sport the Redmond style-feature. However, it seems the information may have been a bit misconstrued.

Faaborg clarified in his blog, that while they have been investigating the interface trends in popular software products, they have not chosen the “Ribbon” to be an ideal solution for a web browser. He goes on to point out that “a tab based and contextual UI designed for holding a massive number of commands for document creation (a Ribbon) doesn’t actually make any sense for a Web browser” and they have no intention of implementing one.

It would appear the proposed interface for Firefox 4.0 (see image) resembles the Chrome and latest IE front-ends: losing the menu bar, and integrating a minimal command UI.

What do you think? Would Firefox have been better with a pretty little “Ribbon?”

Image Credit: Mozilla

Baffling User Interface Designs - Episode 1

Will Smith — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:05:31 -0600

Since the dawn of the graphical user interface, we--the long-suffering users--have been plagued by interface design that's not fundamentally bad, it just doesn't make much sense. The problem is that once these goofy UI designs become accepted, we're stuck with them forever (just look at the stylus-required Windows Mobile UI design, if you don't believe me). If I can keep finding baffling UI designs, then this will become a regular feature of the site. If you'd like to submit your own baffling user interface design topic, send an email to will at maximumpc dot com.

Wordpress "previous/next page" links

I want to say up front that I love Wordpress. I even run it on my own neglected blog. For the most part, it's extremely well constructed, infinitely flexible, and an all around good bit of blogging software. But, I have a problem with it. Go to a Wordpress blog and scroll to the bottom of the page. Odds are that you'll see a little link there labeled "Next". Here's a picture:

That seems straightforward enough, right? Click to the next page, and go to the bottom again. Now, you're faced with this:

Now, if I want to see the next oldest page of blog posts, I'm not sure exactly which link to click. Because previous is on the left, and next is on the right, part of me wants to click "next". However, the posts I want to read are actually the previous ones in the chain, since most blogs are ordered with the newest posts at the top of the page. The people who really get screwed are the ones who start on one of the middle pages, and have to figure out the next/previous paradigm without the benefit of a browser history.

The other big problem is that this inanity is spreading. The blog the screenshots are from isn't actually a Wordpress blog, it's powered by tumblr. Now, the good folks at Wordpress have attempted to fix this problem, but the fix isn't spreading as fast as the goofy UI. The default option now looks like this:

The good news is that the fix is quite easy. All that needs to be done to fix the problem is to change the point of reference from the pages, which is confusing and open to multiple interpretations, to time. Older Posts and Newer Posts leave no room for confusion and no room for misinterpretation.