Back, for a little while

Hi folks!
Just recently, I returned from the short vacation in Borlänge. Beautiful scenery, I've got tons of pictures which I'll try to upload during the next few days. As I returned, I read a couple of interesting news stories that I'd like to share with you.

First of all, there's a new "thing" on iTunes Store called iTunes U. It looks like a co-operation between Apple and some universities and colleges in the States, and the result is a lot of classes, from schools like MIT, PennState or Berkeley, available online - for free! There's a broad range of classes availeble and if your interessted I recommend you to check it out at iTunes Store->iTunes U.

The other news is the introduction of something called Microsoft Surface. I saw a demonstration of this kind of device about a year ago at some Internet TV Channel on Democracy. Then, it was a scientist introducing a working device, and it made a huge impression on me. Now it looks as Microsoft is rolling it out in the winter of 2007. Go to the website and check out those three short video films now! It's seriously cool stuff...

E-paper at school

This week, during our interaction design class, we were able to play around with some different portable devices, in order to evaluate the different interfaces. One of this devices, the prototype of the iRex iLiad is one of those new upcoming electronic paper book/newspaper readers. It was really nice to have the opportunity to play around with tomorrow's technology during class, and of course, I took some shots!

Two different types of tablet PC's running Windows:





Since these devices do not contain keyboard (unless you attach an external one), there must be some way to do the (in)famous Windows trick: Ctrl+Alt+Del. So how did they solved it? Like this (look closely):



That's right, use the pen to push the reset button which sends the Ctrl+Alt+Del command to the system. This reminds me of my Windows-age back in the days (before Linux and just recently OS X). =)

What else do we have? The Samsung Q1 is a real hottie. The interaction, considering the size of the touchscreen, is impressive.





And finally, we have the electronic paper device, iRex iLiad (who came up with this kind of name anyway?!). You can read more on electronic paper on the Net, a good started is (as always), Wikipedia's article on the subject. Here are some pics:








Okay, that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this post! (And sorry about those two last pictures, I can't understand why Blogger has such problems with rotating my photos properly.)

/JW

One of those must-see videos

While reading my daily RSS feeds today, I ran across this video. Featuring Jobs & Gates, and some other special guests, definitely worth watching, if so for the Finder song. Not as geeky as one might think, so give it a go!

Why? Because I'm forced to!

Okay, so just so you know: I'm not doing this voluntary. I'm not doing this because it's fun. And I'm not doing this because I want to.
Nope..the reason is..school. Sure, I could design an interface in Macfriendly applications such as Flash, but seriously, if it's got to be, it better be got! So the prototype will be build the same way as real applications are. For that to be possible I need to install something I can run at school (i.e. Windows...). So here it is, those of you who didn't know already: Macs are perfectly capable of running whatever you need (need is not the same as want in my case) them to run.

Running Windows 3.11 on Mac

This one goes out for all the geeks out there ;)
Here's what's possible to do with a Mac nowadays:



Kinda ol' school feelin' ;)