Thought of this video after watching the photosynth demo and amateur in Stumpy's Blog.
Raises questions we didn't talk about when we discussed interface. What role does the mouse play, as opposed to an OS? In my mind it is even more limiting, in the sense that it literally is the extent of our control outside of the keyboard. Who remembers typing commands into DOS? Seriously though who else feels as if we approaching critical mass in the potential revolution of the the interface?
This system was on display at NextFest in downtown LA this weekend, set up as a 10-foot long multi-user multi-touch system. So on one end, a kid way playing with the lava lamp, while on the other, some guy was zooming through Google Earth, and in between, one person was typing something into an onscreen keyboard while another was playing with a magnetic poetry application. And a lot of other stuff, besides. It was, I have to say, quite cool.
Whatever the future of the interface is, i'm keeping my fingers crossed that it heads in the direction of those awesome sheets of glass from Minority Report that respond to any sort of touch or movement you can come up with. And judging by new technology like the giant touch screen at NextFest or simply the progression of the interface so far to incorporate pure movement to a greater extent (on a Mac, the ability to designate certain screen corners as shortcuts to pan all open windows or view the desktop without clicking at all), that doesn't seem like a fantastic wish at all.
and lastly, I don't support pre-crime.
Last time I was at home my Dad showed my his newest interface toy, a voice recognition program called Dragon Naturally Speaking. It was awesome. He dictated 3 letters in 5 minutes, something that would have taken him 1/2 hour without the program. I had been skeptical of voice recognition in the past, mostly because I had used crappy programs like ViaVoice and saw this Vista demo:
But Dragon NaturallySpeaking convinced me that speech will be a big part of the interface in the not so distant future.
I always joke that the reason I'm not getting a new iPod is because if I get a video iPod now, I can't get the next generation of iPod, which of course will be the new collection of iPod Hovercrafts, also known as the iHovs. I was dissappointed to see that all the newest iPods are just touch sensitive with huge screens. Where are my hovercrafts? Back to the real topic, which is the combining of multiple functions in one object. Why is it that everything now has a camera on it? Some people resist getting the objects that combine everything because they like to physically have one of each, and keep these things separate.
My favorite comedian has the best joke about this kind of thing. I tried to find a way to play it online, but I couldn't figure it out so here's the transcript:
"I think there's too many cameras right now. Like you go to buy something, everything's also a camera. They'll be like "It's also a camera!" I'm like "I just wanted a grapefruit." They're like "It's a camera grapefruit. You take pictures of yourself eating the graprefruit, then you eat the camera, you poop the pictures." "Oh my god, that is the opposite of what I wanted." They keep combining stuff. My brother bought me a cell phone palm pilot (cause I'm a ninja) and I dropped it on the ground and the screen broke, so now it's just a phone the size of a laptop. Technology's moving so fast, it's at the point where you can make stuff up and people will believe you. You can be like "You seen the new Sony teleporter?" and they'll be like "No, but I heard about it." I end up saying that all the time. It means I haven't heard about it, but I like you." -Mike Birbiglia
I found a live performance of the joke. Go here and click on "No But I Heard About It"
enjoy.
I hate that they make so many cell phones with cameras in them now. It's one of my pet peeves, and I don't have a lot. Is it so unreasonable to make a phone that's ONLY a phone? Isn't it ridiculously unfair to make me pay for all this extra crap (camera, web browser, organizer, walkie talkie, etc.) that I will never use? Having all that actually makes the phone WORSE if you don't use it. Extra "features" make the phone bigger than it needs to be and saps the batteries at an alarming rate. I want exactly three "features" in my phone: clear communication between me and the person on the other line, a battery that lasts a long time, and a reasonably small size. In other words, a good phone. Is that too much to ask?
I'm aware that this rant makes me sound like I'm pushing seventy. I don't care; I'm not done. I actually did manage to get a phone last year without a camera, to my delight. The guy at the Verizon store didn't make it easy though. Even after I managed to fend off his attempts to get me to buy a more expensive, newer model, he tried to get me to buy other things. "Oh, are you sure you don't want to pay $30 a month for unlimited text messages? You only have to send 200 to make it worth it. No? Oh, well how about this handy car charger/headset/hovercraft kit? You just want the car charger? Sorry, no can do, it's a package deal. No? You sure? You never know when you might need a hovercraft..."