Posts

Showing posts from March, 2010

Hard hard user interfaces.

Started as someone doing ActionScript in Macromedia Flash I got into Human-Computer-Interaction after watching Jeff's Hann's multi-touch work. That's the power of a really cool demo that inspired the birth of NUIGroup community which spawned 1000s of makers all around the world making their own projector camera multitouch systems. All of it became mainstream once Apple released the iPhone to the world, and also gave birth to my interest in human-centered engineering. I spent some 10 years after that playing with sensors, haptics, and gestural interfaces through multiple input modalities but nothing stuck as much as multi-touch did. Thanks to Apple's execution. Everyone's phone/tablet interaction is default multitouch. (unless you have a visual impairment). Primsense evolved into Kinect, then came Wiimote, Leap but nothing stuck.  for speech, it was Amazon's Alexa. Latest news , that its going to lose Amazon 10B.  Like I am writing this post through my keyboard a...

i wish i had other options

Image
After a lot of misery I thought no device is worth respect more than a device. Lol! not true. The reason was my bad home button. right, its the only button on the device. - I happened to take a sharp swivel knife and pop my iPhone's case open. The shown grounding strap had rust on it and bent slightly upwards apparently from the pressure of the tightened screw. Upon the whole back's removal, I noticed how the main control board where this tiny grounding strap fastens on to, has a contact ring(the wheatish circle in the pic) somewhat larger in diameter than the hole where the screw fixes in.  Makes good sense that the area where actually the rust had culminated is not sealed to prevent humidity, and the sweat and condensation from getting inside due to carrying it in pockets and or sudden changes in temperature. I've stayed a lot in Rajasthan , hot days and cold nights were so common there!  The task wasn't easy- emotions, fear, memories, a lot was at razor...

with all the summer love- The Indian iPad!

Image
I am waiting to see what happens to the indigenous Notion Ink Adam and Apple iPad. Will it even turn out to be a war? Both are not released yet- but the coming summer isn't far away too. Should i quote "breathless anticipation usually reserved by nubile nymphets for rakish rockers." :-P Adam beats iPad hands down in all hardware specs- the hardware - the software( Yay! Android and Ubuntu combo is superawesome) but yes we know of the Apple's marketing strategies. Remember how the tech-blogs like engadget, gizmodo and macrumours assured that the Apple iPod will be a failure! Lmao! It took over the walk-man. Portable music is somewhat defined by it! Let's see how Apple and Adam fare in terms of Tablets. I am seriously not interested in HP-Slate running Windoze 7, as per the leaked specs on gizmodo :D Adam touted on its website about them releasing their own SDK. Following thoughts and questions pop-up: - It'll run Ubuntu and Android whose SDKs pre-exist. W...