The shift I’m talking about is toward an app-driven environment of touchable, draggable, and legible design interfaces, and the death of the web as we’ve known it. By the way, I also give the mouse five years to live, and predict that over the next year or two we will see a radical shift in visual design that will affect the look of everything you interact with, and even change what you DO. The web is already dead meat in a way, at least in terms of the now quaint idea of a “website” and the toxic world of SEO and trying to rank a site and cash in on the G-Hole. Even “social networking” is becoming an utterly arcane concept, as Facebook finally becomes a truly tiresome destination site for even the most-addicted, and all the idiots who spam their friends as if it’s a useful marketing method turn it into a ghost town of “Likes” and an endless stream of banal reposts. It’s starting to feel like tumblr, but a tumblr that denies you the ability to mark off your territory by customizing the interface, and with even MORE tools for mindlessly saying you “like” something.

Some personal disclosure might be useful here to help understand my seemingly skewed view on all of this. The first (and probably last) time I got really excited about a computer was when I was kid watching Star Trek. I’ve been waiting for a computer that you can talk to ever since, and long ago gave up hope. To me, Siri is just a gussied up version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and offers about as much “intelligence” as any existing chatbot on the web, including the one we have running right here on Dissociated Press. And the web in particular became annoying to me about six years ago, when Google finally achieved near-total dominance, and my grandmother started asking me to “SEO her site”. To me, much of the web is a tiresome and steaming heap of crap that’s either user-generated – like your mom’s neglected blog or flamewar-driven comment threads on Facebook or Huffington Post – or programatically generated, like content farms, scraper sites, and reposted content.

A big part of the reason I’m excited about Windows 8 and Microsoft’s new Surface tablet is that the abandonment of skeuomorphic design  in favor of something more like Microsoft’s Metro design language is probably the smartest change in personal computer interface design in ages, and is in fact probably critical to moving toward a truly useful tactile interface like that of a tablet. We are long overdue for a genuine rethink of the decades-old motif of folders, cute icons, desktops, mice, and mechanical-button keyboards. Frankly, I found most of these things annoying from the beginning.

I remember very well my reaction the first time I sat down at a personal computer with any intentions of actually trying to USE it; it was the late 90′s, and it was Windows 98. Yeah, I’m a late adopter sometimes. But what I remember was thinking “Wow. This whole thing with all these little imaginary folders and all this unused screen area is REALLY STUPID!” I also thought that all the attempts to make things look 3D and contoured was pretty wonky. I mean, to this day, I still encounter people who never figured out that the little “paintbrush” icon on the Windows Taskbar is actually a desk pad with a pencil on it, and that it takes you straight to the desktop. Which, by the way, is ANOTHER bizarre analogy; who the hell spreads folders out flat all over their desktop while they work? I learned to ignore all this crap like everyone else, but whenever I’ve paused to think about it, I’ve maintained that book spines on a shelf would have been a much better motif, both in terms of space used and easy visual recognition.

So to get back to the point about why I’m excited. It’s no secret that smartphones and niche tablet products like the iPad and the Kindle have been driving acceptance of the “app” as opposed to websites or familiar dedicated software applications. And the whole idea of touchscreens and dragging things with our fingers is no stunning innovation at this point either. In fact, forward-looking people like Seth Godin seem to have already abandoned catering to the desktop computer monitor in favor of smaller screens and a grid-like legible layout. Just look at how his website currently renders on a standard Windows widescreen desktop. He’s no dummy, and think this is no mistake. Also note the simple app-like navigation:

For several years, web developers have had to deal (if they were being smart and thorough) with the annoying task of designing two websites every time they work on a project, one for regular computers, and one for mobile. When it’s done right, the user doesn’t even realize that a different site is being served to them depending on which device they’re on. But all this interface stuff is likely to go through a radical transformation if an operating system as pervasive as Windows heads in this new direction, especially if they back up the change with a commitment to hardware that supports it, which they have.

And I have to admit that this commitment to the hardware is winning me over in spite of my lack of love otherwise for Microsoft. The “Surface” fixes two things that made me not buy an iPad when they came out. I said at the time that if Apple had simply added a thin “lid” that had a touch-sensitive keyboard that flipped out of the way and otherwise protected the screen, I would have been sold. That, and if they had allowed a little more flexibility in terms of what software might run on it. I waited for something more like this, and was about to be rewarded. I was literally on the verge of clicking the “Buy” button for an ASUS Transformer Prime and docking station the other day, but I think I’m going to sit tight. It may not be the Surface itself that I buy, but you can bet that the entire industry just got a jumpstart that will motivate a half-dozen hardware companies to create a competing device, if they haven’t already. And more importantly, if the massive 90% of the personal computing market that Microsoft still holds is suddenly made to switch to this new kind of interface, you can also bet that the death of cute graphical design elements is not far behind, which flies 100% in the face of the entire current Apple design aesthetic. And this all has the potential to lead us into an exciting new world. That of AOL in 1996:

Just kidding. I’m actually quite intrigued with the possibilities. I also can’t wait to add another image to the Steve Ballmer Weird Gesture at the Product Launch Gallery:

By the way, have you ever wondered why he makes all those weird paw-like gestures? Well, according to the website Kittydar, he’s a cat:

Having trouble recognizing
reality? There’s an app for that.

Reality just not real enough for you lately? Having a hard time identifying the objects around you? Well, no worries. There’s an app for that. Or at least there will be before too long. We’ve talked about Augmented Reality before, but another concept is gaining traction as the next big thing. It’s called the Internet of Things . It’s based on the idea that since the coming IPv6 addressing system for the web will make it possible to encode 50 to 100 trillion objects, well heck, we just might as well. And since the average person only has about 1000 to 5000 objects around them, we’ll just give all of them addresses so we can attach information to them, since there are plenty of URL’s for everyone! We jest of course. In (ahem) reality, these technologies make some amazing stuff possible. One implementation of the idea that has gotten some press is Green Goose, an activity monitoring system that uses green, egg-shaped sensors to track your activities and help you to reach goals that you select. Their tagline is “Play Real Life”. ReadWriteWeb covered the start-up in February of last year and again this year,  if you’d like to learn more. Personally, I’m already busy enough living my life that I don’t feel a need to do it twice. But the system points to interesting possibilities. We’ve already seen some of the cool tools made possible by object or environment analysis and universal connectivity. The song recognition app SoundHound and Quest Visual’s instant translator app Word Lens are two popular examples. But in the future, we may be able to access information about nearly anything around us, with tools similar to the “terminator vision” used in T2: Judgment Day. Let’s just hope this stuff works better than autocorrect. Below is just one example of the possibilities of having detailed information about the things and people around you with point and shoot simplicity. Just make sure you keep that antivirus software updated!

Microsoft Surface

One of the cool things about Tokyo University’s holographic interface idea is that it is genuinely tactile:

A quick montage of hologram VFX from Iron Man 2

It’s pretty remarkable to see tools like the Wacom in skilled hands:

If you can figure out what a Töken multitouch screen is, you can run Emulator and do this:

Here’s a quick tutorial for Seline HD, mentioned above

This “iPad Orchestra” video is kind of cool, but only hints at the real potential of Seline HD

This “iPad Band” video is a cleanly edited – if not immaculately performed – runthrough of various tools.

Why does Green Day hate the iPad? Maybe they’re just getting old and stodgy. Or maybe they really ARE punk at heart.

This demo of iHolophone is cool, if only because it’s running on a phone.

* My Rickenbacker was stolen around 1991. I’m still offering all the royalties from the book I’ll write in prison after I murder the cuplrit to the person who can tell me who it was.

Mumbling British musicians give a basic overview in this video…

Two guys using an Eigenharp to jam on Moby’s version of the Bond theme in their closet…

Here’s a Misa Digital Guitar Demo…

And Tony Levin on a Chapman Stick…

The information highway is littered with the debris of half-baked ideas for interface and input devices. Vintage sci-fi movies like Lawnmower Man and Johnny Mnemonic suggested a future in which we’d all be living partially in some kind of virtual world, wearing goggles and gloves to interact with it. Well, VR gloves do exist, but a quick look at a product like CyberGrasp raises the reasonable question: Why? Recently a friend was telling me about how cool their Wii was because of the fact that the shooting game they were playing gave a recoil feeling in the remote. I told them I’d get excited about this kind of feature when I could feel the bad guys shooting back. For some slightly more practical applications of your Wiimote, check out developer Johnny Lee’s do-it-yourself projects for Minority Report-like multi-touch interactive interfaces. It’s a little like an iPhone for your whiteboard. Then there are some interesting twists on the mouse concept. You may remember the now extinct and not-so-cleverly named CueCat for instance. Some of us received these doodads free in the mail back around 2000, as part of an attempt to tie real-world products with information on the web via bar codes. Although the marketing failed, thousands of CueCats roaming the wilds led to a large hacker community. Around the same time you could also get a free keyboard called a RocketBoard. The only thing that made it unique was that it had a bunch of orange buttons that acted as hotkeys to connect you to soon-to-be-defunct Internet Bubble startups or dinosaurs like AOL. One of the few descendants of this kind of “trapped in the box” thinking is the Open Office Mouse, which, although developed with the Open Office platform in mind, possesses none of its functional genius. In fact it’s a rather ugly and cumbersome-looking doodad. With a wire attached, no less. But if odd and customizable multi-button input devices are your thing, you might get one and supplement it with the Ergodex DX-1, which, to be fair, at least looks like it would be of some use to people with cognitive, sight, or motor impairment. Then there are input devices which make sense or are at least rather clever in some way, like the TactaPad, which is sort of like a tactile Wacom Tablet, or the Swiftpoint TriPed, which is a smart multi-purpose stylus/mouse conceived for use with tablet PC’s. While clever, they’re probably a little too counterintuitive or niche-market oriented. And if you’re into that whole interactive and immersive tactile experience thing, maybe you should hook your gaming system up to a Predator Motion Simulator or a DreamFlyer, stick it in your VisionDome  personal iMax theater, and go ahead and put that CyberGrasp glove to use. Personally, if I were looking for a tactile input experience, I might opt for Jenny Chowdhury’s bra-powered Intimate Controllers. An input device I’m sure the typical thirty-going-on-thirteen male gamer would love to get his hands on.

Jenny Chowdhury’s Intimate Controllers:

Both the Swiftpoint TriPed and the TactaPad make a lot more sense when you see them at work in a video:

The Open Office Mouse. Lots of buttons and…. a WIRE?!?

For a mere $16,000.00, the InMotion Simulation Predator can be yours.

I’m always babbling about innovative laptops and cool user interfaces, but the video at left explaining a new user interface concept by 10GUI is probably the most insightful rethinking of the desktop that I’ve seen in a long time. As an interface designer myself, I think the iPhone (although I feel no need to own one myself) is probably the most brilliant personal computer interface to date. I’ve been dying to own a larger device that utilizes its multitouch features, which is why I’m always drooling over the idea of a Mac tablet or dual-touchscreen laptop, but have also often thought about how a lot of the features of a multitouch screen are actually antithetical to the realities of desktop use. This video by 10GUI references that, and offers a fantastic solution. I’d have to try the deeper levels of task and file management that they demonstrate in the video before I’d know if I agree with the solutions offered, but on the surface they make perfect sense. I’d love to see this interface integrated into a real device and try it. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, the nerd all the nerds love to hate (Michael Arrington) just (ahem) touched on  this topic the other day over at TechCrunch.

10GUI shows us where it hurts:

Other than watching Tom Cruise get abused by the Dr. Solomon Eddie character (played by persvasive creepy bad guy Peter Stormare), one of the coolest things about the film Minority Report was probably the gestural computer interface that Cruise’s character used in his police work. While many developers have been working on ideas like this for awhile, they often are not quite there – like this cool video demo, which is really just a huge iPhone-like multi-touch display – or they seem a bit misguided in their goals. Like Mgestyk Technologies, where they take a great idea and demostrate it with first-person shooter games. The clip seen here is the latest from Oblong, who seems to have the most sophisticated and practical system in operation. Not surprising, since they were consultants on the Minority Report effects, which were based on existing MIT work.

Years ago I had a dream in which I was playing an amazing instrument that responded to my hand gestures and thoughts, creating sublime, transcendent music that moved the soul. Then I woke up. The best that I had at my disposal at the time was still my electric guitar, because a velocity sensitive keyboard, although it’s pretty cool, had been around for awhile. The evolution of the musical instrument interface has amazing possibilities these days, as evident in the reactable project created by students at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. As is so often the case though, the same technology seems to be more immediately applicable to practical needs, like selling cocktails. The clip at left is the brick, a “Tangible & Multi Touch Sonification Instrument”. Which is one of the more creative and purposeful interfaces I’ve seen. Many of these concepts are clever, but end up being rather non-musical or like the reacTogon, just a a clever redesign of existing ideas. Coming at things from the other direction, Japanese artist Daito Manabe lets the music play him (YouTube clip). If you watch that video, you’ll get a feel for what it means to “surrender to your art”. That can’t feel good. Daito Manabe’s YouTube page is here; he also seems to do interesting public performance art projects like whitebase + Daito Manabe and disturbing video experiments like Milk. Yucky.