Touchscreens are changing the way we think of data and function- you no longer need an interstitial tool to scroll through your email, play a game, rotate a 3D object or zoom in/out of a picture- the previously virtual things create on computers become almost pseudo-physical. On a typical computer, I manually control my mouse which results in a virtual cursor moving in a predictable way, but that relationship becomes closer if I start to use my hands to move and manipulate objects on my screen, just as if I were to move physical objects around a room. When we start to have a physical relationship with objects, we start to care about them much more- if a the department store can get you to try on an outfit, or a watch salesman can get a timepiece on your wrist, you are much more likely to ‘bond’ with it and ultimately, buy it.

Duncan Wilcox has a great way of stating it:

To a novice user, aiming at something on screen with a mouse is like trying to ring a doorbell using a broomstick. The tool that’s between you and the target object is the cause for the lack of directness. You will get used to it out of necessity, but that doesn’t make it better than direct interaction.

It is still too early in this new interface shift to really know how this will affect us long-term, but I dont think it will be very long before we see a real explosion in the application of touchscreen technology. There are already touch screen computers, phones, cameras, watches and tables; how long until auto mechanics use a physical interface to pre-envision parts and fixes or a screen on your refrigerator lets you maneuver through your over-packed shelves to see what you really have in there?

Image Credit: EugeniusD80

Update:

Added Duncan Wilcox quote

Once you log in, it takes a few moments to log into your account but then pulls in profile data and your photos and begins to integrate them into the game trailer… sounds elementary but go see your personalized trailer and tell me it isn’t skin crawling to see your photos included in the storyline for a post-apocalyptic virus scare.   Check it out on the Prototype site; I really think this is the future of social integration and is definitely the most original and impactful Facebook Connect site I’ve seen yet.

Well today, Hulu has surpassed even my expectations by releasing a beta version of Hulu Desktop.

Available on both PC and Mac, this provides a desktop-interface for perusing and accessing TV Shows and Movie on the site in a way that is compatible with your Apple Remote or Windows Media Center.  I haven’t tested it yet but from the demos Ive seen it looks incredible and exactly the kind of native platform integration a lot of users have been looking for.

Check out their demo video here:

After all, it will make your life easier, I promise. See all the IE6 issues Google is indexing?

Compared to 75% fewer with Firefox…

It will make your life easier. And mine. Help make the internet a better place…. just upgrade.

Basically, some photographer took a picture of Ashton Kutcher and someone linked to it in a comment left on TechCrunch. Apparently, the photographer and her little crony thought this was worthy of $150,000 settlement or else they would sue for $1.5 million! This guy who claims to be representing the photographer calls the site ‘TechCrotch’ and quickly shows that he has absolutely no idea how the internet works!

Anyway, check out the first post by Michael Arrington and the hilarious updates that followed from both sides…today there was an updated post with an apology letter from the instigator, in which he admits that he has no idea how to work the internet.

This is all really hilarious if you read through it, but I doubt it is unique…I’d be interested to see some of the crackpot threats that massive companies like Apple and Microsoft get!

Engadget has leaked photos of the 3rd generation iPod Nano that is anticipated to hit stores sometime this fall before the holiday shopping season. Instead of continuing down the path of slim, stylish engeneering and design marvels, Apple has opted that the next nano will be short and stout…it looks to be more of a micro-Blackberry that will be cumbersome to hold. While no one can actually verify that these images are the official product, Apple’s legal team has been shooting out takedown requests, suggesting that they are not too happy that the public is getting a sneak peek.

So it cannot be guaranteed that the ‘leaked’ pictures are the real thing, but if they are…it seems that the nano and the 80GB 5th Generation got together and had some short stubby offspring.

This image is a recreation of the original that was hosted at Engadget, because the Apple lawyers made them take it down…but here it is…judge it for yourself.

Microsoft has released a beta version of its newest search feature: Tafiti. Essentially, this is a visual search tool built on Microsoft Live Search and Microsoft Silverlight technology: rather than just listing out our search results, Tafiti creates an interactive searching experience that allows you to search for websites, images, news, books, and RSS feeds at the same time with a stunning graphical interface that is Vista-like in its design.  It features drag-and-drop saving of search results, labeling and compiling tools and also presents an option for “Tree View”, which lacks a bit in the practicality sector, but is very aesthetically pleasing.  Basically, a tree grows and each branch has the text of a web result on it; you can narrow or widen the tree as you want in order to narrow or broaden the search criteria.  This also comes with a full-screen option and scroll buttons to rotate the tree.  I’m not sure when I would ever use this view while actually searching for something, but it sure makes it look good!  This is definitely one of the more fun search applications, I’ve ever encountered.

The best review I’ve encountered for this new tool is from Matt Dickman, which provides a walkthrough of Tafiti’s features. I recommend checking out his site and watching his review below. I will agree with many of his sentiments about it, especially that using Silverlight as the base program fro this search tool could prove to be the Achilles heel of an otherwise awesome program.

In order to make Tafiti a truly viable option in the search engine world, Microsoft will either have to allow it to be adapted to Adobe Flash or seriously step up its distribution of Silverlight. Another user option that would be amazing, but will surely never materialize would be the option to select your own search engine to return your results. Perhaps someone will develop a plugin in the future that would allow such a switch. But all-in-all, Tafiti is an awesome tool that shows that Microsoft is still capable of revolutionizing a field if it really tries! It seems that when companies position themselves at the top f thier market, they slow down thier innovation and trade risky, revolutionary ideas for tame, mediocre, and basic features. Perhaps Tafiti is the beginning of a shift back to the trendy cutting-edge of user experience…maybe Microsoft will someday decide to give Apple a run for its money with design and usability, but I think it will be an uphill battle for them.

Courtesy of Matt Dickman at Techno//Marketer

17% of respondents said they had looked at a candidate’s profile on some social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook, and 53% of them said they were more likely to vote for that candidate after seeing their profile! 53% of those who had looked is equal to approximately 9% of the total survey sample, which may sound low, but MySpace has well over 100 million users and Facebook boasts 35 million (and growing by approx. 1 million/wk), so a 9% win-over rate is a pretty health showing! (I realize that not all users are in the US, or registered voters, etc…but you get the idea that it is a lot of people)

What might be the most astonishing statistic to come out of this survey is that 62% of those people who browsed a candidate’s profile, were over the age of 30! This is a huge development that shows how much these online arenas will be changing the political world int he near future. The are no longer a child’s playground, but adults are using them too…if it were all college-aged users browsing these profiles, the numbers wouldn’t be very exciting since the 18-27 age bracket is the least democratically involved at the polls. However, the 30-45 age bracket is very active in elections, making these survey results very important to the upcoming election.

One thing to say about this survey, however, is that I haven’t seen the actual text of the complete survey or the methodology behind it, so I can’t vouch for its integrity. And it may well be that people who look at candidates’ profiles were more inclined to vote for them before and that is what drove them to the site…but even if this is the case, this data shows that the face of politics is changing in America.

The emergence of the YouTube debates, the explosion of social networking site users, and the expansion of each candidate’s online presence is a sign that the old-media way of vetting candidate’s is shifting and the public is adopting its own way of doing things. With the hotly contested elections in the recent past, it is very possible that whoever manages to capture the largest portion of that 9% of users could tip the election in their favor by the slimmest of margins…and we are still over a year away from the general election: there could be ways of voter organization and online political advertising that we haven’t even though of yet that could spring up and have a major impact on the 2008 election.

As social networking sites increase in popularity, more and more businesses are striving to maintain worker productivity by simply blocking access to sites such as Facebook and MySpace. This week, an Australian firm released a study claiming that Facebook usage costs Australian businesses $4 billion in lost productivity…Mashable posted a good analysis of the study:

“An Internet security company, SurfControl, looked into the issue, and it estimates that Australian employees spend approximately one hour a day on the social networking site. Using that number, they come up with the slack time costing employers approximately $5 billion Australian ($4 billion US) a year in lost productivity.

How they reached this mysterious number is, just that, a mystery. The study lists that there are 800,000 businesses in Australia, and they are estimating one slacking employee per company. A problem with this estimate is that Facebook only currently lists approximately 224,000 members from Down Under, and then you still have to assume each one of those people is a very active user of the site.

Of course, the fact that this firm sells a web and email blocking system may explain some of it.”

-originally posted by Mashable 

If this is indeed the methodology used in this study, I’m certain that any second-year college student with basic research skills (or even younger, if they have a decent level of commons sense) would be able to point out a plethora of fundamental flaws in this research design. Honestly, even if I ran a company whose business was controlling workplace net traffic, I would not release this study, if only to keep my company’s name off such an ineptly created statistic.

This is merely the latest push to stem the rising tide of social network users. Over the past year, companies all over the world have made efforts to block access to sites like Facebook, in fact, in Britain an estimated 70% of firms have blocked or limited access to Facebook. Despite the efforts to keep them off, however, users are simply getting more creative at accessing the site…the moral of the story is that you can’t fight social shifts: Rock’n'Roll won because of Elvis and the Beatles, user-generated media is winning because of Wikipedia and Digg, and social networking will win because of Facebook and (dare I say it…) MySpace.

It will be interesting to see how the balance is reached in the future between workers and firms each trying to balance their priorities. Maybe we will see a more widely-adopted Google model of running a company…