User interfaceJuly 26, 2007
Some thoughts on the types of UIs I like:
1. | Minimalistic. I'm with Apple on this one: The less clutter, the better. Tuck away uncommonly used features. |
| 2. | Efficiency. UIs should make it as effient as possible for users to complete their task, and support such things as key mappings etc. to make things even faster for experienced users. How many keyboard buttons and mouse clicks are required to complete a task? |
| 3. | Consistency. Whenever possible, make UI functionality consistent. This aids in learning and makes using a UI more pleasant. |
| 4. | Beauty. UIs that use graphics and graphical odornments well make using them much more pleasurable. |
Nutritional infoJuly 21, 2007
I saw something fascinating today on Facebook... a feature of the "Books" application whereby if you hold a book's ISBN up to your webcam, it will process the image and look the book up for you.
A light went on in my head: I was thinking earlier this week that it would be cool to create software to do image recognition on those standard nutritional info labels on foods. But I thought it cumbersome to have to put the thing in your scanner, especially if it was on a non-flat label. A webcam would be the perfect solution... hold the food up to your webcam, click a button on your computer, and then have it see if it can recognize the info. Ideally this would be tied in to an application that would allow you to track what you eat.
More generally, I realized that in the future, webcams won't just be for chatting with people over the Internet, they will be an important input device where you hold something up to the computer, even a typed page, and ask the computer to read in the information.
PhotosynthJuly 21, 2007
I've checked out Photosynth before, but I've never seen it presented so well. Checkout this
TED talk by a researcher at Microsoft demonstrating this fantastic technology.
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