After 30 years, Microsoft does somn "cool"

It seems the multi-touch and "true" direct manipulation interfaces are starting to pop-up in many products. I'm a big fan of this interaction type so I'm glad to see some interesting progress being made. I would not expect any one product to "get it right" the first time around though. I'm sure users will unveil serious problems that will take several generations to get to a point where the UX is bearable for routine everyday use. The Microsoft Surface product starts out pretty slick with it's ability to recognize PDAs and integrate with them apparent ease. I also think it's important to have a large screen for multi-touch interaction since our hands are pretty big themselves.



As Henry Petroski notes in his book, "The Evolution of Useful Things", all of the things we have come to rely on, (even things as simple as forks and paper clips) did not begin as flawless designs. They slowly evolved as each generation learns from the last and adds some innovation in turn.

So although these new product are way high on the cool factor I will probably wait to see what people hate about them before I consider buying one.

I cant wait to get rid of my RAZR

Maybe it's not the phone, maybe it's software or service... it's hard to tell these days where to put the blame. I have many gripes but one in particular really chaps my hide. So you try to make a call but for some reason or another there is a bad connection and it fails. This was not an issue with my phone but now, instead of notifying me audibly a message appears on the phone screen with a modal dialog. The problem: I can't see with my ears; after I dial the number I instinctively put the phone on my ear waiting for the ring. When there is a failed call, however, you'll never know until you get tired of waiting for the ring and take a look. This really infuriates me for some reason. A simple irregular beep in addition to a screen message would be much better. Another possibility is instead of just a message, the phone can try to redial the first time automatically and allow a choice for the user on subsequent failed attempts. Or maybe just keep redailing automatically until the user actively stops it.

Wow, a video on how to code something?

I don't think I've ever seen an instructional video about a programming topic and don't think I'd be so inclined to watch one before now. For those that don't know, an IDE(Integrated Development Environment) is a familiar acronym for developers; it's where they do all there work. They are typically massive software packages that seem to do a million different things. Most of these IDE's have serious usability issues with a lot of complexity. Fortunately, most of these systems are very customizable. And most developers spend a great deal of time customizing thier environment to something most usable for them. The more advanced IDEs even provided ways for developers to enhance the features of the software with plug-in support. As you might imagine developing these plugins can be difficult as programmers would have to learn about the behind-the-scenes inner-workings of the IDE. One IDE, IntelliJ, claims that developing plugins is actually very easy and provided a video to show it. Now I wouldn't exactly call this process easy, but the video demystified a lot the detail work that is sometimes hard to find. Sometimes just getting started is difficult thing.. or maybe just integrating a finished plugin... in any case, all these details are right in the video! They also have a lot of very readable traditional documentation on this topic. No wonder they have over 300 plugins and new ones every week.