The app is elegantly designed and driven entirely by gestures, making it easy to add tasks, remove and rearrange them. That’s always been the benefit of iOS apps and it’s nice to see Clear trying to exploit this as much as possible. The nice, simple colors also make it very intuitive to see tasks in priority order. From the video, it looks like you swipe right to complete a task, and swipe left to dismiss it. A drag motion lets you reorganize tasks, while the app also uses an ingenious “pinch apart” gesture to add a new task, and a pinch inward to collapse menus and lists within tasks.

RealMac Clear should available from the App Store soon.

[via NOTCOT]

I mean, you’re supposed to feel that way about people and not objects. But designer Julius Tarng has this precisely in mind (the former and not the latter statement) with his Modai phone concept, which is supposed to further humanize smartphone technology.

The Modai is a versatile mobile companion with a friendly looking UI that can switch between two modes: Fundai (social mode) and Prodai (work mode.) Content, messages, and files will be sorted into the two different screens, and switching between the two will be a breeze (or so, says Julius.)

According to the designer, the Modai was inspired by human behavior and was designed to last, both physically and emotionally. (This is, however, the first time I’ve ever heard of a smartphone having emotions. Say what?) Modai is supposed to form a meaningful bond with its owner, making it less likely that its owner will dispose of the phone and upgrade within 18 months. Modai help form a bond by helping its owner through their day, and also reflecting its own “mood” using an avatar to represent things like battery status or volume.

The phone would even feature a built-in stand embedded with memory wire, which can be used to let the phone express itself through physical gestures. For instance, it would gradually rise up to wake you up in the morning.

Assuming you do form a bond with your Modai and don’t want to ever let it go, you’d still be able to upgrade its technology, thanks to a modular design with replaceable internal components.

The Modai is just a concept for now, and while it’s got some elements that I believe will be pretty hard to achieve, it’s still an interesting design all the same.

[via Yanko Design]

Sono Mocci calls their concept the Nesting PC Virtual Tablet, and from what I understand it’s a 13-inch tablet that’s also meant to be a charging and syncing device. It’s certainly a great idea, since you’ll only need to plug in the tablet in order to charge multiple devices, plus it allows you to shuffle data on the go, although I think burning a CD or DVD would require a considerable battery life. Also, keep in mind that today’s tablets are not built with data transfer in mind; most of them don’t even have a file manager, let alone a USB port. In that sense, this tablet is a counterpoint to what we have today.

The other unique feature about this concept is its intuitive visualization. Whatever you plug into its ports is represented on the screen with a life-sized and detailed icon, down to the Ethernet cable and power port, almost as if you’re seeing through the screen. It’s certainly pretty to look at, and I can see how it can make transferring data a much more idiot-proof procedure. Perhaps you can drag the CD to the SD card to copy the data in the former to the latter. As you can see the complementary phone can still be used even if it’s plugged in to the tablet, which is good the whole thing goes inside the tablet.

Unfortunately for Sono Mocci their concept wasn’t chosen for any of the awards in the competition – you can take a look at this year’s winners here – and I think I can see why. The visualization concept is more eye candy than functional. For example, ports and slots already have different shapes, so unless you’re a total newbie you’ll know that what’s plugged into the USB port is a USB device or cable, and that an optical disc is inside the optical drive. Unless, of course the tablet also provides a more specific description of what’s plugged in, e.g. the name, type, size and content of a disc. Also, notice how the visualization concept is taken too far – why would you need icons of the Ethernet cable and the power plug? How would a user interact with those icons?

As touch-based interfaces become more and more mainstream, the need for tailor-made UIs becomes even more and more important, especially when it comes to managing data and different devices. Even if Sono Mocci didn’t win any awards, I hope their concept sparks an idea in someone else’s mind, one that could lead to a more practical UI. I guess that’s what concepts are for anyway.

[via designboom]

What are the advantages of having an interface that distorts the content before scrolling it? First, it lets you preview what you’re going to see when you scroll before you actually scroll. With today’s interface, the moment you move your finger to scroll the content immediately moves. With Flex, you can for example distort Google Maps in several directions and quickly preview the surrounding area while still seeing where you originally were on the map.

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Flex also makes it easier to go back to where you originally were on the screen, although with small touchscreens like on smartphones that second advantage might not be too noticeable. The researchers also claim that Flex could be easily integrated into any touchscreen-based device, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself being able to distort the screen of your next phone or tablet.

[DigInfo TV via TechCrunch]

You’ve probably seen Surface in some TV shows like CSI and Human Target. This new generation of Surface comes with a 40-inch LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 1920×1080. That sounds impressive, but my MacBook has the same resolution in a lot smaller form factor. Still, it is Full HD.

Surface computers include Microsoft’s PixelSense technology that can recognize up to 50 simultaneous touch points, as well as objects placed on top of the screen. Now that’s pretty cool. The first system to run on Surface 2.0 will be the Samsung SUR 40, which runs on a powerful AMD Athlon II X2 Dual-Core CPU, running at 2.9GHz, along with an AMD Radeon HD 6700M GPU with DirectX 11 support. Surface actually runs on a special version of Windows 7, 64-bit edition, customized for tablet usage. Here’s a brief demo video showing off the new  SUR 40, which can be used on tabletops, or even hung on the wall:

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It will be available later in 2011, with prices starting at $7,600 (USD). While that may seem like a lot, the previous generation Surface started at $11,000, so the prices have definitely dropped.

[via Fubiz]

Here’s the interface in action. It’s still in development, hence the delay in response, but it does work:

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What I can’t understand is why Hitachi is planning on incorporating this on desktop PCs and even TVs by the middle of next year. No doubt, gesture-based technology is useful in some instances, but does it really have a place in everyday usage? Will our lives be more awesome if we could wave our hands in front of our PCs just to view pictures and zoom in on maps? Have I just become too old to appreciate new technology? What the hell is going on?!

[via Akihabara News]

Using an IR laser, an IR camera and specialized software, Mouseless is able to interpret hand and finger movements. Basically, the laser illuminates parts of the hand that are touching the surface of the table. The camera tracks those illuminated parts, and the software sorts out what kind of commands are being sent, from simple movement to clicks to multi-touch gestures.

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Mistry claims that their working prototype only cost them $20 to build, which means that this technology is very feasible. If Mouseless ever gets adopted, I hope that they come up with gestures that are less taxing. For example, instead of moving my hand around in a cupped position, I could just use one finger to move the mouse. Other than that, it’s perfect: we’ll have one less gadget to buy, to carry, to charge or buy batteries for. That not only means savings, it also means less waste.

[via Pranav Mistry via Gajitz]

As you can see their design is a bit crude – they had to make sure that current from the fingers still gets to the touchscreen, hence the need for the conductive material. But they also realized that they didn’t have to add conductive material – you can use an ordinary knob and “grab it such that your fingers actually touch the screen making it nothing more than a physical prop to provide some tactile feedback.”

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As some of the commenters on Vimeo said, the knob would help not only with manipulating images but also with controlling music apps  or any other app that will benefit from knob controls.

[via OhGizmo!]

Walky’s interface is idiotproof – make your fingers walk and the robot walks, make a jumping gesture and the robot jumps, kick and the robot kicks. You can imagine how much easier it would be to teach people how to control robots using a system like this as opposed to something that uses an array of buttons, levers and knobs. Nintendo hit upon that idea too, and turned it into lots of money by creating the Wii. Hand over a gamepad to an inexperienced gamer and you’ll have to spend quite some time explaining the controls before the person gets the hang of it, but give that same person a Wii and he won’t even need your help because the input system is much more natural. But is gesture-based input really the simplest and most practical input system?

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I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna have to side with buttons, levers and knobs for now. If you watched the video you saw how freakin’ cumbersome the system was; there was simply too much effort needed for a simple command. Maybe gesture-based systems are okay for entertainment or educational purposes – Walky is indeed a fun way of introducing robotics to kids – but if I had to use a natural input system I’d rather it be a voice-operated one.

[via Plastic Pals]

As you can see from the picture above, Miller’s take on the next generation interface is a keyboard-sized multitouch pad, partnered with software that makes use of 10 fingers at once. But that’s not even half of Miller’s practical ideas. He also imagines an operating system that, instead of letting users clutter their screens with windows, imposes order by constraining the position, size, and movement of windows. Think it won’t work? You’d better watch Miller’s video for the rest of his 10 cents:

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You know what, screw you tengooey, man the narrator’s voice is hypnotic. Comforting. Soothing. He could be saying fruit gallop poncho for all I care. I think I’ll play this video until I fall asleep. Check out the 10/GUI website for more info.

[via digg]

The 16 x 8-foot interactive display allowed multiple visitors to simultaneously control audio, video, photos and other multimedia content using their hands to navigate.

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The installation was put together by Obscura Digital and commissioned by HP as part of an advertising campaign for the event.

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GUI Wiz Darren David was responsible for putting together the user interface using Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF.) According to David, the entire project was designed, developed an built in just four weeks.

[via Fresh Creation]

ZenZui’s differentiator is its unique “zooming” user interface which lets you quickly maneuver from one application or website to another. The interface features a grid of customizable “tiles” which provide links directly to the users areas of interest. Once a tile is chosen, the selected content immediately fills the mobile devices screen.

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Note the huge album art, and video playback is done in landscape mode to provide excellent widescreen movie viewing. The video also shows off the FM tuner capability (which now appears to support RDS for track and title information – cool!) and a sneak peek at the ability to share content between devices.

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The second video shows off the tune sharing ability a little better, which looks less like the streaming ability that was originally rumored, and more like the ability to download tracks from device to device. The latest word is that DRM will be used to make shared tracks expire or be limited to a certain number of plays.

[via Mobility Today via Gizmodo]

More details have emerged on Nintendo’s interface which will be broken up into “Channels.” Below are Nintendo’s descriptions of the channels:

Disc Channel: This channel allows users to play either Wii game discs or the entire library of Nintendo GameCube discs.

Mii Channel: Fun caricatured portraits created in this channel can be used as characters across a variety of Wii software. Portraits can be stored in a user

No real surprises here… The ability to pull up system menus while playing a game is really the only “new” thing for Sony, and this has already been done on the Xbox 360. There’s also no indication yet how navigation of downloadable content will work, but in all likelihood, they’ll try to do something to respond to the content services that are already present in the 360 with Live Marketplace and also expected for the upcoming Wii.

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[via VideoSift]

Technical Overview from Microsoft Research (PDF)