Although there are a ton of DIY app builders out there, the majority of them are either designed for those with a little bit of coding know-how, or involve drag-and-drop components which are used to create a basic app or mobile website. A new startup called AppGyver (rhymes with MacGyver!) is different. It’s a mobile app prototyper, not an app builder, and it’s aimed at those who need to rapidly… → Read More
I’m a big fan of conceptual designs. Basically, designers who love to look at things and want to make them prettier will mock up what they think a product should be. One of the hottest properties in the world is Instagram, and it’s a very visually appealing app. One designer decided that he’d like to see it take a giant leap forward, so he put together a concept treatment. → Read More
Our own Josh Constine is speaking to Oblong Industries at TechCrunch Disrupt today, and they’re discussing the future of human interface when it comes to technology.
Kwindla Kramer and John Underkoffer from Oblong had this to say about its mission. → Read More
I used Path twice. None of the people that I know are using Path. I even checked with an early adopter of social media recently and one of Path’s earliest users. She told me that she doesn’t see a lot of people using it. Generally, this is not a good indication. Maybe there are millions of secret Path users (or users in another geography that I don’t know about) but it seems that Path just… → Read More
If you haven’t powered up the ol’ Xbox 360 yet this evening, and you signed up for the Xbox 360 System Software Beta, you might want to go do that now. It’s live, and apparently has some very tasty updates to the UI, Avatars, the ESPN app, Netflix search capabilities, and something to do with that music player that no one bought. [via Joystiq] → Read More
Natural user interfaces using gestures aren’t really new, but AirSwing, a technology developed by Toshiba, offers something unique: it neither requires expensive hardware nor substantial CPU resources to work. After installing AirSwing (which is in prototype stage) on your computer, all you need is just a conventional web cam as the input device to start. → Read More
Who could have guessed that simple gestures like pinch-to-zoom would make or break a phone experience for some people? With Android 2.1 slowly rolling out to most Android handsets out there, HTC decided to step up its game and bring that multitouch action into its own UI. But before you start getting uppity about when it’s coming, do not that this video is coming from Japan on a unit that… → Read More
The same guys who brought you the bubble input have created a crazy scratch UI that allows you to scratch and tap almost any surface. By sensing the sound and the finding the peaks and valleys in the waveform the system can tell if you’re scratching a shape or tapping on the surface. → Read More
The more time I spend using computers, the more I realize that the ways in which we interact with them suck. Typing is a pain, and I’m very inefficient using a physical keyboard. When using an on-screen keyboard, I’m even less efficient. Until someone invents a really superb way to interact with computers, I guess the best I can hope for is the crocodile keyboard layout for on-screen text entry. → Read More
Wow, hats off to some of the eggheads at Carnegie Mellon. They’ve developed a touchscreen that can actually produce tactile buttons by using latex, acrylic, and a little air pump. Imagine a touchscreen-only phone that pops up little keys when you open the on-screen keyboard. It’s like haptic feedback on steroids. → Read More
Android is now available—yeah, it’s true—but you’re hard-pressed to find any review that raves about its user interface. (Ryan Block, of Engadget fame, called it “very raw” last week on Tekzilla, which is right on the money, I think.) But, in an alternate world, maybe where dogs walk people, these alternative user interfaces were developed. The Astonishing Tribe, the… → Read More
Some players do not mess around, from Wow Insider Really good news for serious World of Warcraft players. It looks like Blizzard, starting with Wrath of the Lich King will store all your customized UI odds and ends—dungeon maps, coordinates, threat meters, etc.—server-side. That means if you’re away from your main WoW machine, you’ll still have the same interface… → Read More
Cool. Looks like the HTC Touch Diamond (and presumably the HTC Touch Diamond Pro) can actually do multi-touch. Apparently it’s just around the navigation buttons that the multi-touch works – not the entire screen, which seems odd. The feature is revealed when using HTC’s Nav Debug Tool but so far doesn’t have any practical use beyond simple testing. However, HTC updates its ROMs on a… → Read More
Cool. Looks like the HTC Touch Diamond (and presumably the HTC Touch Diamond Pro) can actually do multi-touch. Not only multi-touch on the screen itself, but all the way down around the navi-wheel and buttons. [Update – Apparently it’s just around the navigation buttons that the multi-touch works.] The feature is revealed when using HTC’s Nav Debug Tool but so far doesn’t have any… → Read More
Starting in June, we’ll see a bunch of ASUS laptops shipping with the Express Gate instant-on UI. The interface was created by DeviceVM and is called Splashtop, although OEMs can apparently change the name to suit their needs, hence ASUS calling it Express Gate. It’s branded as “a light-weight operating system that allows consumers to use their computers seconds after hitting the… → Read More
Here’s some more video of the Touch Diamond’s interface. The various devices I’ve seen have at times been a little laggy with the photos and the tilt sensor — stuff like that. It may have to do with the fact that they’re connected to the Wi-Fi network here along with 150 other people. Hopefully the production versions will be a bit snappier. The device demo’d in… → Read More
I can’t quite put my finger on it (pun intended) but this interface looks similar to something I’ve seen before. The “Smart Touch” UI by Gigabyte for its line of GSmart phones will be available in Europe “after May,” so there’s no telling if we’ll see something like this here in the US. Actually, we’ll see a lot of stuff like this if we… → Read More
Esteban and his partner Javier sent us this demo of a $20 multi-touch screen they built as a thesis project. It’s quite cool. This one is a few inches across and can sense multiple inputs and even pressure. He writes: Javier Jorge and me started with this project one year ago for our thesis. We are Computer Engineer students at the “Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Fisicas y… → Read More
Samsung has filed a patent for a phone that is operated with only your hands, but not on the phone. The idea is that you move you hand around and form gestures in the air to control the phone. The patent states that the hand movements would be captured in the phones camera and then translated into instructions for the phone. As interesting as this technology is, it is only a patent, so who knows… → Read More
Meizu just posted about fifty pictures of the new MiniOne UI and what we’re seeing is considerably removed from the iPhone-alike it used to be. Apple’s concepts and ease-of-use are fair game, in my opinion. Copying their UI wholesale is just lazy. Forum Post Meizu MiniOne UI Updated [Giz] → Read More
The Register’s Bill Ray has an article about what we might expect from Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Danger, maker of the popular Sidekick operating system. It seems that, according to Ray, Microsoft’s looking to shift away from Windows Mobile as a user interface towards Windows Mobile as a platform upon which developers can overlay their own shell-like user interfaces, a… → Read More
Big surprise here. The wonderful “multitouch” interface used by the iPhone, iPod touch, and new MacBook Air is; A) not Apple’s invention, B) famous because of Apple, and C) will begin appearing in more and more devices. → Read More
I don’t have access to a Voyager at the moment and I’m not sure if this was apart of the firmware upgrade that went out last month. Can any Voyager owners comment? K. Thx. → Read More
While this isn’t as sexy as the HTC Touch interface — dig the cube, man — this new piece of software from PointUi mimics some iPhone functionality while hiding the hard mess of WinMo6 under a pretty wrapper. As Michael points out, maybe if I had this on my Shadow I’d answer my phone more, but I doubt it. We’ll give it a whirl once the vodka passes out of my… → Read More
So you’ve got your iPhone and your iPod Touch and your Microsoft Surface, and maybe you’ve got yourself a little pink DS lite. What do these things have in common? Two things: they all share a trendy interface — the touchscreen — and they all will be forgotten in a few years’ time. The touchscreen is a minor blip on the giant radar of human interface devices, and it… → Read More
Little is known about these spy shots of a new interface designed for Sony-Ericsson’s UIQ. What I see is a touch-based interface that is half iPhone, half HTC Juno. You would think a guy snapping photos during a corporate presentation would be willing to cough up a little more information! Sneak peek at SonyEricsson’s new UIQ interface [Gearfuse] → Read More
Durrr… Hi. I’m a phone manufacturer/mobile OS programmer. Durrr… urm…. durr. Hold on. I just had to make pasgetti. So I sawed a man in the Apel stor who had a cool fone called the apelphone. it had a big screen… ICE CREAM!… and it was touch swansitive. You could move your finger on the screen like you were pushing boogers off of the screen and he had a boogie in… → Read More
Is this thing on? OK, does everyone remember the Zune Phone CG told you about? You do? Very good. Other than the fact that it was coming out and we didn’t know anything else about it, but it seems the patent monkeys have found the patent for the Zune Phone’s UI. The UI appears to be tiled and whatever it is you wish to see will be brought to the forefront whilst everything else stays in the… → Read More
I stumbled upon KeyTouch while trying to tackle a pair of Ukrainians who wouldn’t stop talking about the LG Shine in their Kraken-howl language. It’s not particularly ground-breaking, but it’s a text entry system that uses the directional keys to pick characters after each keypress. Say, for example, you wanted to type AK 47. You would hit the 2 key and see a little compass with… → Read More
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