perfidy

ME FIRST!!! ME FIRST!!! ME FIRST!!!

I do find it slightly disturbing that in the video, the demonstrator zoomed in on a map to my precise current location.

They are, evidently, watching me and want me to know it. I need new tinfoil.

Am I the only one experiencing a flashback to a prior message from you, B, about 2 years ago, on the topic of a different sort of completely intuitive personal computer system?

As I recall, it was purely hypothetical, but I can't recall how best to find it to see how well it would fit in with this new gew-gaw.

Thanks for the link, I'd just like to play with the damn thing. The maps look like fun; I'll bet animation is a breeze. Amazing.

Big problem -- no more Cheatos when working on the pooter.

But seriously ;) one of the most obvious aspects of this is the sheer size of the display. It's "human-sized", in the sense that there are physically distinct areas you can put information. A real-world desk is something you can "compartmentalize", using your spatial memory as an organizational and workflow tool. Computer displays have ramped up pretty seriously in resolution -- having a 1600x1200 21-inch LCD is only a $600 proposition these days. I think the multi-touch is cool but a little showy. Some of the gestures (like zoom-in) are nice simplifications, and the two-handedness adds precision. But...I can't help but think that what I really want is something that lets me type as fast as I type now (when I'm _generating_ information) but also do direct manipulation (mouse stuff). I want to do that without moving my hands. If something could detect my hand positions hovering over the keyboard, that would be cool -- I could hold down a "positioning" button just below the space bar, then make small movements in the airspace above the keyboard that would be picked up and translated into pointer movement. If you detected the movements of both hands hovering the keyboard, then you could do some of the multitouch gestures as well. Such movement detection would be dramatically more accurate than rubber sticks or touchpads...

Ross, that totally reminds me of the little scene in Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy where Zaphod Beeblebrox is trying to change the station on the radio and the narrator is kvetching about how controls have gotten so sensitive to gestures that they're practically useless... you just wave your hand in teh direction of the console and pray it does what you want.

Being of the generation I am, I have a hard time imagining that future people will not want a keyboard. But then again, I have a hard time understanding why people put their trust in a music file they buy off the internet. I have a vast collection of physical music storage devices (CDs) that are rapidly becoming conceptually obselete.

How much do you want to bet that in 10 years, owning a lot of CDs will be equivalent to keeping all your savings in gold bars under your bed rather than trust banks, and in 20 years using a physical keyboard such as are ubiquitous now will be the equivalent of checking the weather by calling the local Time & Temperature line?

Which is to say, touchingly out of date and slightly crackpotty?

Ross:

Such movement detection would be dramatically more accurate than rubber sticks or touchpads…

Really? That seems counterintuitive to me. Oh, wait - you included touchpads, which could be compared unfavorably to simply controlling the computer by directed farting, and are surely a joke the devil's played on humanity to amuse himself and his minions.

J: OK, Mr. Smarty Pants - how do you get the time and temperature since you're apparently too busy to just call the number?

J: OK, Mr. Smarty Pants - how do you get the time and temperature since you’re apparently too busy to just call the number?

Jeez... I bet you pine for the days of pull-top cans too. Does your car need a bottle of lead substitute to run?

Ever heard of [url=http://forecastfox.mozdev.org/]ForecastFox[/url]? Since I spend most of my time within 20 feet of a live inter-web connection, and the rest outside, that's pretty much all I need.

Wait... when you need to call someone on the phone, do you have to wait for your yackety neighbor to get off the party line? Do you have to walk to the wall unit and move your finger around a wheel with holes in it? Or do you just have the operator ring GEriatric 8-5000?

Tell me... did you ever get to meet Theodore Roosevelt? What's he like?

Lord only knows why I'm feeling such the smartass today.

I really do have to ask... when is the last time you called Time and Temperature?

Just off the top of my head, I think the last time I called time and temperature was while my family lived in South Bend, IN. I don't know why this sticks in my mind, but time & temperature was a service of one of the local banks, First Bank & Trust of South Bend.

That would make it circa 35 years ago. Plus or minus. Ever since then, I've tried to live my life without needing to know the time or the temperature, since there's clearly no longer a valid, trustworthy source for either.

Love the idea of this, but I effing hate touchpads on laptops. For some reason I am always touching it when I'm not touching it and it effs up things onscreen.

This type of interface is amazing, but no more Cheetos while coding for me. *weep* What will I do without my orange cheese crack powder?

The best example of the UI's use was the picture organizing/browsing demo. I would find that incredibly useful for sorting photos for a virtual scrapbook. It would be really cool to tag them from a classification/tag list as a sidebar to the display. How neat would that be?

What's the alternative if you don't have all your fingers or you are wearing gloves or a band aid?

Of course for the germphobic, like me, I'd be wiping down the screen everyday. But it would also give me EXTREME pleasure to yell at folks to stop touching my computer screen. I effing *hate* that. Those little smudges drive me nuts. My PSP is a freakin' mess of smears!

Otherwise, it would make a really cool drug toy. I find it so hard to believe that Buckethead used to go to raves until I see stuff like this and then suddenly I can picture him head to toe in blinky lights with some weird jumpsuit on.