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Can Firefox Last Five More Years? Forecast: Cloudy

2009-11-10T18:57:06Z

In a world where computing goes "cloudy," can Firefox survive? What if Chrome OS successfully merges browser with operating system to create a new Google world order?

This is all highly speculative, but on Firefox's fifth birthday, I fear for the browser's future. (I am not alone; Tony Bradley also worries over Firefox).

The coming war between Microsoft and Google is likely to be fought in the cloud, perhaps with browsers tuned to support each company's vision--and defy the other's.

Google's Chrome browser and OS seem to be a step in this direction, to a desktop that is optimized for software and data that reside in the Internet cloud. In such a world, operating systems--as we know them today--might not matter so much.

That plays to Google's strength and against Microsoft's. Whether it is a good thing for businesses and their users remains to be seen. For many, cloud computing forces a reassessment of what they expect from applications and how they are used.

I am thinking specifically about the feature gap that exists between Google Apps, hosted online, and Microsoft Office, which resides on the user's computer. This gap may not exist forever, but somehow I do not see Google ever competing with Microsoft on a feature-for-feature basis.

The biggest danger to Firefox, as it enters its second half-decade, is the changing role of browsers, from surfing the Internet to running applications. This makes me wonder whether Firefox will be a casualty in the battle between Google and Microsoft.

Chrome OS may be an environment specifically built to run Google's cloud apps and those built to some future Google specification. I can see Microsoft moving in the same direction, though it is unlikely to abandon Windows for something more Chrome-like.

If the two superpowers are going to fight it out in the clouds, with browsers and browser-based operating systems their weapons of choice, what is a mere open source browser to do?

It all depends on how things play out and is, of course, dependent on cloud computing actually becoming if not the dominant business-computing model, at least something close.

When Java was introduced, there was much discussion over how it might supplant Windows and become the environment of choice for applications. You may remember when "write once, run everywhere" was supposed to trounce Microsoft Windows with a wave of portable desktop apps.

That did not happen, but this might: Future-generation browsers, and I am thinking Chrome and Chrome OS here, might work with cloud applications to effectively neutralize the desktop OS. In so doing, the choice of a browser may become more one of whose cloud you want to use than the features of the browser itself.

Maybe Firefox can prosper in such a world, either by being the browser that supports both Microsoft and Google on equal footing, or simply by avoiding the fray. I cannot accurately predict the future of cloud computing, but my guess is the browser of five years from now may play a different role than the Firefox of 2009.

I would appreciate your take on these issues.

David Coursey tweets as @techinciter and can be contacted via his Web site.

Copyright And Education In Conflict?

2009-11-11T00:43:00Z

Dark Helmet writes in to alert us to an article discussing a recent Larry Lessig speech concerning conflicts between copyright and education, leading DH to write: "What do we, as a society, value more: business rights or education rights?

Because we're more and more often hearing stories about IP law effecting things like text book answers, lesson agendas, syllabi, etc. It seems that we are so wrapped up in the idea of personal rights and personal walls around the content that we create or organize that we're losing sight of some truly important values, none more so than the ability to educate our emerging leaders to their fullest. After all, what could do more to promote the progress of our society and way of life as a whole than to educate our masses to the fullest? What standing could one possibly have to impede another's education to eke out further profit?"
Indeed. For quite some time it's appeared that there's a bit of a conflict in the basics of copyright and the concept of education -- which is all about sharing information and spreading that information. It's one of those things that copyright maximalists (especially the ones who are professors) usually don't like to talk about.

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Reinventing the MBA: 4 Reasons to Mix Business With Design Thinking

2009-11-10T21:00:00Z

We've all heard the news that the traditional MBA framework is broken, but adding courses on business ethics and financial crises won't solve the problem. And although Harvard, Wharton, Kellogg, and the rest are all considering bringing new ways of thinking into their hallowed halls, a relatively small school in Canada is actually transforming the meaning of an MBA right before our eyes. The Rotman School of Management, helmed by Roger Martin, proposes a radical idea: to develop business leaders who are well-grounded in multiple disciplines. The Rotman faculty aim to mold managers who are equally comfortable and adept at using tools and frameworks from business, popular culture, and design to solve the most urgent challenges of the day--what Rotman calls integrative thinkers and what I call hybrid thinkers. He's a bit of a kindred spirit.

Earlier this week, I had the chance to sit down for a public lecture with Roger to discuss his new book The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage, which focuses on the part of the Rotman approach most absent from traditionally analytical MBA programs: design thinking. Roger cares most about bringing together both the art and the science of management to create better leaders. His work is a correction to the data-driven revolution that has made business more reliable but which has also driven courage and intuition out of management. But he's no fan of simply giving designers the keys to the kingdom, either. An over-reliance on intuition is every bit as limited as management by the numbers.

You can view the entire interview in the video above or get a sense for what we talked about in the beautiful mindmap created by my colleague Jon Gabrio.

Until you have time to get in deep (you can see this image larger here), here are the four biggest takeaways from the conversation:

Strategy is an act of design.Roger's interest in design thinking stretches back two decades to his time working closely with the senior vice president of design at Herman Miller. What changed the way Roger saw the world was that this highly skilled designer tended to view all of his challenges the same way. Whether overseeing the design and introduction of the Aeron chair or working out new directions for the organization, he focused on new possibilities rather than the application of existing ideas. You can't analyze your way to real strategy. You have to create it from data, guts, empathy, creativity, and a little thin air.

Balancing the analytical and the intuitive is key to great leadership.At the beginning of this decade, countless companies could have created the iPod but didn't because their analysis told them it was too risky. Analytical thinking prevented them from seeing a promising new opportunity and driver of growth. Apple, led by the famously intuitive Steve Jobs, was able to seize that opportunity and run with it to market leadership. That said, the gut of Steve Jobs is far from infallible. The AppleTV, Power Mac G4 Cube, and his company NeXT were all flops because they didn't make sense from an analytical standpoint. Great leadership involves bringing both lenses to bear to find better possibilities.

Roger's take on design thinking isn't rooted in design.One of the more surprising comments Roger made during our conversation was that designers aren't necessarily good at what he calls design thinking. Having a tremendous sense of aesthetics, prototyping, form, and ergonomics doesn't inherently reflect the ability to imagine previously unseen possibilities. To my mind, this calls into question the entire term. If design thinking isn't based in design and the abilities of designers, then the term may need to change. Without any question, increasing any organization's design capability will increase its ability to differentiate from its competitors, to build a more consistent brand, and to create more appealing products. But it's something else entirely to create a culture of innovation. We would do well to make this clear in the terminology we use.

Templates, not management theory, are the enemies of innovation.A few years ago, Roger said, quite provocatively, that managers need to become designers to succeed in the next era of business. This was a comment that was met with great fanfare and not a little controversy. But when discussing the topic now, Roger has a slightly different outlook. It's not that either businesspeople or designers have a monopoly on good ideas. It's that there is a vanishingly small number of people who are actually interested in solving mysteries: as few as 10 to 15 percent at traditional strategy firms, a similar number in design firms, and even fewer among most corporations. Most people, whatever their background, are more comfortable reapplying a formula that has worked in the past than at generating new possibilities. They just try to use a template from an existing success, which is the chief reason we see so many copycat products and copycat strategies. We don't necessarily need more design-minded businesspeople or more business-minded design people. We just need more people ready to take on mysteries.

I've got just one more thing to share from the evening. It's small, but essential to call out. Roger is an incredibly gracious and humble guy, always ready to praise his colleagues and friends. That's rare for people at his level and with his accomplishments. After all, it's his humility and team-building that has allowed him to attract the kind of amazing faculty and executive staff who are the on-the-ground heroes of Rotman's good-to-great transformation.

Read more of Dev Patnaik's Innovation blogBrowse blogs by other Expert Designers

Dev Patnaik is the CEO and founder of Jump Associates, a firm that helps companies create new businesses and reinvent existing ones. He advises senior executives at some of America's most admired companies, including GE, Nike, Target, and Hewlett-Packard, and is also an adjunct professor at Stanford University, teaching design-research methods. His 2009 book Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, makes the audacious argument that the human power of empathy is the source of all innovation. Dev was recently featured as a guest on "The Business of Innovation," a series on CNBC. His articles on innovation and strategy have appeared in BusinessWeek, Brandweek and the Design Management Review.

Google VP Mayer Describes the Perfect Search Engine

2009-11-10T22:00:20Z

Google VP of search Marissa Mayer talked to IDGNS about the perfect search engine and the secret of Google's success in search.

Hate It Or Love It, Twitter’s New Retweet Style Is Rolling Out

2009-11-10T22:56:38Z

Yes, Twitter is in the process of rolling out its new Retweet functionality to a more users, the service confirmed today. Based on the number of tips we’ve received, and the number of TechCrunch staff members who now see the functionality, it would seem that today’s roll-out is pretty large.

So what’s the verdict? Some people love it, some people hate it. It is definitely a significant change to the way people are accustomed to using Twitter, so it will undoubtedly take some time for most users to get used to. Some may call this “Facebook Syndrome” (users always complain when Facebook changes something, even if it’s for the better), I call it “human nature” (people generally dislike change).

If you do happen to have it now, here’s a few interesting notes about the new feature (at least on twitter.com):

First, there is a new Retweets area in the right side bar. This allows you to see “Retweets by others”, “Retweets by you”, and “Your tweets, retweeted”. While the UI for the main homepage retweets can be a bit confusing at times, this Retweet area is laid out pretty nicely, as it is easy to see who exactly retweeted what.
Second, as co-founder Evan Williams noted today, there is an easy way to turn off retweets from individual users. Simply click on their profile and make sure the Retweet logo (the circular arrows) below their name is not highlighted green. This means that it’s off and you will not see Retweets from that user in your timeline. That’s great for users who go overboard with the feature and muck up your stream.
Third, if you do hate the new Retweet way, just don’t use it. Nothing is stopping you from still using the “RT …” syntax. The new Retweets simply give you an easy way to highlight something to your followers with the click of a button.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Typekit Launches its Cloud-Based Web Font Service

2009-11-10T23:02:49Z

Typekit takes a cloud-based approach to fonts on the web, serving up an extensive library of designer fonts that be incorporated into a site simply by dropping in a line of code. We first wrote about it back in May when the project was first announced, and now the service is live.

What that means is web designers can get easy access to creative fonts without having to spend the time preparing images or Flash files to render them, ideally resulting in time and cost savings in the design stage. It should also provide a more lightweight experience for your web server, because it won’t have to serve up the comparatively heavyweight image or Flash files to render a variety of design-quality fonts.

It also means all that text will be searchable and indexable by Google instead of locked up in an image or Flash file. That means a search engine optimization boost could be in store for sites that opt for Typekit, as well as better accessibility which makes for improved user experience.

The caveat attached to all the benefits is that only browsers that support the CSS @font-face rule will be able to serve Typekit’s fonts. That means support is limited to Firefox 3.5 and up, Safari 3.4 and up, and Internet Explorer version 5 and up. That could rule out its adoption by webmasters whose sites must support older and legacy browsers.

Typekit is employing a freemium business model, with a non-expiring “Trial” tier you can access for free with certain limitations (5 GB monthly bandwidth, smaller font selection, only 1 site and 2 fonts per site supported, and a Typekit badge required). Personal plans start at $24.99 per year with two more tiers above that and negotiable enterprise pricing available as well.

What do you think of the cloud-based approach to font serving? For the web designers and developers in the house, is this a service that tempts you? Why or why not?

Reviews: Firefox, Google, Internet Explorer, Safari

Tags: accessibility, cloud computing, CSS, fonts, typekit, web, web design

Google hopes to remake programming with Go

2009-11-10T23:00:00Z

A Unix co-creator is among those behind a language Google hopes will speed computers and programming. Today, Go becomes open-source software.

The original 40-button mouse

2009-11-10T14:50:57Z

In the thread about Warmouse's unauthorized and many-buttoned OpenOffice mouse, Don Simpson points to ProHance's illustrious original. 40 buttons! It requires DOS 2.0. [AtariMagazines]

I have a 40-button mouse, the ProHance PowerMouse 100, from around 1990. ProHance Technologies in Sunnyvale, CA also made 3-, 12-, and 17-button mice. If you think "ProHance" is so silly a name that no-one else would have used it, just try Googling it by itself

Google’s Holiday Gift: Free Wi-Fi at Airports

2009-11-10T14:51:10Z

Here’s a nice holiday gift from Google (which may point to a service further ahead): the company will provide free Wi-Fi on airports across USA from now through January 15, 2010.

Google has worked with Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and other companies to provide this free service. It is currently available at 47 airports, including Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. It gets even better for residents of Seattle and Burbank, where airports will now offer airport-wide free Wi-Fi indefinitely.

It’s a cool gift, but Google also gives you the option to make someone else happy, too; once you log in to one of the Wi-Fi networks, you’ll have the option to donate to Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Additionally, Google will match the donations made across all the networks up to $250,000. Finally, the airport network that generates the highest amount per passenger by January 1, 2010 will receive $15,000 to donate to the local nonprofit of their choice.

This initiative comes on the heels of another similar holiday gift; recently, Virgin America and Google started offering free in-flight Wi-Fi for passengers. This option will be also be available up to January 15, 2010.

You can find more info about this initiative, as well as a full list of participating airports, over at www.freeholidaywifi.com.

Reviews: Google

Tags: Google, trending, wi-fi

Expect Caffeine after the holidays (Matt Cutts/Gadgets, Google, and SEO)

2009-11-10T16:10:06Z

Matt Cutts / Gadgets, Google, and SEO:
Expect Caffeine after the holidays — Back in August we mentioned a developer preview of Caffeine, which is new technology that improves our indexing infrastructure. The feedback on Caffeine has been very positive, so we're ready to move from the developer preview to the next stage of the roll out …

LinkedIn works with Twitter, and vice versa

2009-11-10T05:00:44Z

Today we’re announcing a partnership between LinkedIn and Twitter – and new features that we think are going to make both Twitter and LinkedIn more powerful for you.

The idea is simple: When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, you can send that message to your LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool.

Why? Because when you’re trying to get something done, you want Twitter and LinkedIn to work together. Like peanut butter and chocolate! Or at least that’s what Biz and Reid think:

LinkedIn has always been about helping you to build your professional identity on the web. The many elements that make up your online professional brand range from your LinkedIn profile to the many professional conversations you’re a part of. Status has proved valuable to our users, from finding new assignments and jobs to kick-starting a global business enterprise.

Now you can amplify those messages by broadcasting them to your audience on Twitter.

How does LinkedIn work with Twitter?

The feature is now available to all of our users, and with today’s launch, we’re making that two-way communication between your status updates and tweets a breeze to set up. Here’s how it works:

1. On LinkedIn

Want to share some interesting ideas about an industry-specific article you’ve just read with an even broader audience? Or how about letting people view your Twitter account name on your LinkedIn profile? Begin by joining your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts in just a few clicks. All you need to do is check the Twitter box under your Network Updates box on the homepage and follow a few simple steps.

Syncing your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts

Clicking through the setup process will allow you to specify the Twitter account that you’d like to sync and/or display on your LinkedIn profile.

Display Twitter on your LinkedIn profile

2. On Twitter

As a professional online and in the real world, you’ll often find articles or think of ideas that would be useful to share with your Twitter followers and your LinkedIn connections. It’s about sparking interesting conversations. Now you can share from anywhere. As part of the setup process, you can choose to either send all your tweets or select tweets from Twitter back to LinkedIn as a status update.

Share tweets as your LinkedIn status

If you pick the latter, don’t forget to add the #li or #in hashtag to every relevant tweet you’d like to send back to LinkedIn. Here’s a good example:

Include #in with any tweet to post as your LinkedIn status

So go ahead and get started. Link your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts today to add a new dimension to your professional conversation.

Posted in LinkedIn Announcements, New Features, Product Features

WHAT IS WEB STRATEGY?

2009-10-25T04:30:00Z

WEB STRATEGY:

IS NOT ADVERTISING.

IS NOT TECHNOLOGY.

IS AN ONGOING PROCESS.

IS ABOUT NUMBERS.

IS ABOUT BRANDING.

IS NOT RESERVED TO STRATEGISTS.

IS ABOUT LOOKING AT WHAT IS ALREADY HAPPENING, BUT NOT BEING PARALYZED BY IT.

IS MUCH EASIER IF YOU ARE CREATIVE.

IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE ONLY ONE THING.

IS ABOUT OBJECTIVES AND CLARITY.

IS ADMITTING YOU HAVE NO IDEA SOMETIMES.

IS NOT TACTICS, BUT THE RELEVANCE OF THESE AND THE EFFICIENCY BY WHICH THEY ACCOMPLISH THEIR GOALS.

IS NOT AN ACRONYM.

IS NOT MEDIA-BUYING.

WILL QUESTION THE RELEVANCE OF YOUR BUSINESS STRUCTURE.

IS A DEATH SENTENCE TO MANY BUSINESSES.

IS COMMON SENSE.

DOESNT COST A LOT.

IS NOT SOCIAL MEDIA, SEARCH, NEWSLETTERS OR WEBSITES.

IS ABOUT CREATING, PLANNING AND EXECUTING.

IS TYING LOOSE ENDS AND CUTTING STUPIDITY.

IS BEING COHERENT AND HUMBLE.

IS STILL ABOUT NUMBERS BECAUSE SOMETIMES IT COSTS A LITTLE MONEY.

IS ABOUT LOOKING AT THE MANY, AND CRYSTALIZING THE SINGLE IDEA.

IS ABOUT TAKING SYMPTOMS APART AND UNDERSTANDING THEIR PROCESS.

IS TAKING A STAND AND ASSUMING THE RISKS.

REQUIRES DECISION-MAKING AND ACTIONS.

Google is now full VoIP provider with purchase of Gizmo5

2009-11-09T19:40:50Z

Up until now, Google's Voice service has been a bit of a piecemeal apparatus. You've needed regular land lines, a mobile number or another VOIP service for it to work. Not anymore...

Windows 7 Could Make Microsoft the GM of Software

2009-11-07T22:00:00Z

A management consultant says Windows 7's success could be the worst thing to happen to Microsoft.

Tired of Flash? HTML5 Viewer For YouTube

2009-11-08T19:32:00Z

An anonymous reader writes "Instead of spending the next 10 years trying to find a Flash implementation for Linux or OS X that doesn't drain CPU cycles like there's no tomorrow, NeoSmart Technologies has made an HTML5 viewer for YouTube videos. It loads YouTube videos in an HTML5 video container and streams (with skip/skim/pause/resume) against an MP4 resource, and an (optional) userscript file can update YouTube pages with the HTML5 viewer. The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are supported. Personally, I can't wait until the major video sites default to HTML5 and we can finally say goodbye to Flash."

The Future of Interface Design

2009-11-03T13:00:46Z

Did you know the first “brain-tweet” was sent out this year? How about that we may someday be customizing windshields with widgets? In the not-to-distant future, we may be interfacing with computers in exciting and innovative new ways.

In the grand scheme of history, it wasn’t long ago that the first telephone conversation took place. Relatively speaking, that makes the personal computer an invention of yesteryear, and social networking only a blink of an eye later. Just imagine what’s coming in the near future…

The future of how we interact with computers is exciting to say the least. What once seemed like nonsense outside of Hollywood and Science Fiction is now starting to find it’s way into reality, and some of the technology is a bit overwhelming. Have a taste of what the future of interface design has to offer:

Heads Up Displays

F/A-18C HUD by RealD

Although Heads Up Displays (or HUD’s) were originally developed for military aviation so that pilots could keep their heads up, HUD’s have found their place in many more applications. Today they can be found in many cars and in a wide variety of experimental scenarios.

Consumer Vehicles

Some of today’s cars are already offering HUD’s that display information such as speed or RPM’s directly onto the windshield. There are even helmet mounted Heads Up Displays available for motorcyclists now. So far we’ve only dabbled in the field of vehicular HUD’s though.

A patent from Microsoft reveals that the company may look into creating windshield HUD’s in cars that display all sorts of information from temperature to email. Maybe someday we’ll even have windshields with enhanced night vision, or even customizable widgets.

Eyewear

There are many new eyewear HUD products on the horizon including a pair of specs being developed by Brother, and eye-gesture glasses developed by German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems.

Applications for these devices include navigating with augmented reality software, assisting engineers and doctors, or even something as simple as watching a movie or browsing the internet… only you get to do it hands free.

It appears that many of the newer eyewear HUD products may start emerging as soon as 2010, but the exact specifications and pricing is a bit blurry. Until then, if you’re a DIY kind of person you might be able to hack a wearable computer with a heads-up display of your own like this guy.

Gesture-based Interfaces

Gestural Interfaces allow computers to recognize natural human idiosyncrasies and actions. For example, there are quite a few gesture-based systems that decipher emotions in human faces or the “hidden” language of hand motions.

Often times, gestures act as a more seamless way to communicate with machines. For example, the iPhone bump application allows two users to exchange contact information by literally “bumping” their phones into each other. Such an action could be compared to bumping into someone, or swapping business cards, and feels more natural to the end user.

Likewise, the Palm Pre has a “gesture pad” that recognizes basic thumb swipe patterns: swipe from right-to-left to go back, throw an application off the screen to exit, or slowly drag up to bring up a global navigation menu.

You may already be aware that there are tablets that can learn your unique handwriting patterns and transcribe written text with a pen into plain text for use computer documents. What may blow your mind though is that a group of scientists have a working model of a new system that does this without the pen. That’s right, you scribble your thoughts into thin air, and a computer transcribes it into editable text.

Whatever the application, gesture interfaces that recognize human body language instead of archaic data entry are here to stay. They’re intuitive, user friendly, and it may even be appropriate to call them “fun“. Have you seen the latest iPod’s? Just shake them to shuffle your music library!

For more information, you can pick up a copy of Designing Gestural Interfaces: Touchscreens and Interactive Devices, by Dan Saffer.

Spatial Motion Interfaces

There have been a couple of very promising developments coming from the Entertainment industry for spatial Motion Interfaces: interfaces that translate movement captured in a three-dimensional space into inputs on a device. Almost everyone knows about the Nintendo Wii’s motion controllers. Sony and Microsoft are also hopping on board, introducing their own technologies in the coming years.

Microsoft Xbox’s Project Natal turns the user into the controller.

The PlayStation Motion Controller is Sony PlayStation’s response to market demand for a motion controller, one-upping the Wii’s Motion controller by tracking distance on top of motion and rotation. Perhaps even more exciting in the field of spatial Motion Interfaces is Microsoft Xbox’s Project Natal which uses no controller whatsoever, instead tracking the human body as the means for controls.

Outside of the gaming industry, Toshiba has been developing their own hardware that appears to be taken straight out of Minority Report. They hope that someday their technology will become more available in the mainstream markets.

Augmented Reality

Wikitude AR Travel Guide

GPS systems, though useful, have begun to lose their luster as they find their way into more devices. What if instead of showing an overhead map of the area with an overlaying route, your GPS revealed directions directly on a live video feed of your current location?

That would be cool, huh?

Such is one of many potential applications of augmented reality systems: live views of real-world environments combined with computer generated imagery. It’s not just your imagination. In fact, some devices including a hefty number of smart phones are already finding themselves victims to AR software (Maybe you’ve heard of the Wikitude Travel Guide)

Augmented reality isn’t limited to navigation of course. There are already applications like Yelp for the iPhone that streams user reviews of restaurants over the camera feed; or Nokia’s Point and Find that allows users to find relevant information about objects simply by pointing your phone camera at it; and many other practical ideas that may become a reality in the near future.

Other Sensory-Based Interfaces

Neural Based Interfaces

Telepathy may be the works of science fiction, but with the use of new neural computer interfaces, there may be a time in the future where sending thoughts becomes common practice. It was actually earlier this year that the first tweet was sent via brain from the University of Wisconsin’s Neural Interface Lab.

Another company, Braingate, has developed a similar technology that has allowed paralyzed participants to check email, or even play a game of pong using only their mind.

The technology works by implanting a small microchip in the users brain which analyzes pulses as inputs for the devices being used. Of course, the technology is still in it’s infant stages allowing the average user to write at approximately 10 characters per minute, but the applications for such a technology are limitless. Disabled users who previously have had little or no access to email or the internet can use this technology to communicate like never before.

It is hoped that someday this technology will go beyond the trivial game of pong and even help those who are paralyzed by creating a connection between the brain and muscles where a spinal cord injury otherwise prohibits communication. Such a connection may allow paralyzed users to someday move certain muscles again, and perhaps even walk.

Voice Based Interfaces

Left: iPhone | Right:Tom Clancy’s EndWar

Vocal Interfaces aren’t exactly new, but we keep finding new applications for them. From cell phones that recognize basic commands and names, to video games that respond to speech (such as the game “Tom Clancy’s: EndWar” which can be controlled entirely by voice commands), we’ve seen some innovative applications thus far.

MIT recently developed a wheelchair with a voice interface that not only responds to speech, but also saves detailed maps in memory and can take the user to their desired location via simple voice command. Another relatively new application of voice interfaces includes Google Mobiles “Search by Voice” commands.

Surfaces Become Smart

Last but not least, interface designers are tapping into something almost as ubiquitous as air itself: surfaces.

If you want to see a truly inspiring look of what the future may be more like, you’ve gotta take a minute to watch Microsoft’s vision of the future. If it doesn’t make you want to live in the future, nothing will.

Okay, so maybe were a ways off from this, but there are a definitely few conceptual ideas worth getting excited over. For one, CRISTAL is a smart surface that takes on the form of a common table. What’s not so common however is that this table can control many of the electronic devices in your room, such as TV’s, Sound Systems, Lights, Radios, and even DVD Players.

There’s also a group of MIT students who have developed a prototype system that could potentially turn any surface into a smart surface using a webcam and projector. Pick up a newspaper, and watch a video of the headline news directly on the paper. Need to dial a friend? Hold out your hand to let a number pad appear before your eyes. It’s a concept of course, but definitely one I could get behind.

Why does Net Neutrality matter?

2009-10-30T17:46:45Z

Jessie Dylan (related) gathered up some of the Internet's pioneers – no idea how Skype's Chris Libertelli sneaked in there – and produced this video. It has to be one of the best overviews of why Net Neutrality matters.

Just think - without an open Internet, the millions of hours of free voice and video conversations which have already happened today between people using Skype, simply might not have been possible at all.

Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients

2009-11-03T09:00:33Z

It's hard for clients to understand the true value of user experience research. As much as you'd like to tell your clients to go read The Elements of User Experience and call you back when they’re done, that won’t cut it in a professional services environment. David Sherwin creates a cheat sheet to help you pitch UX research using plain, client-friendly language that focuses on the business value of each exercise.

Droid Launch: Is This The Start of The Android Revolution?

2009-11-07T03:30:02Z

the Motorola Droid hits the shelves today, ready for the Android-hungry masses. The question everyone wants to know is, is this the start of a revolution in the mobile space?

OpenOffice Introduces Multi-Button Confusion With New Mouse

2009-11-07T02:21:00Z

WarMouse introduced a new mouse that seems to be aimed specifically at incredibly dexterous OpenOffice users.