Sound Sensitive Virtual Touchpad

Imagine being able to turn any surface into a touch tablet – think of the possibilities. Walls. Tables. Your partner. Hmm… OK, stop thinking about that now and go read about (and watch) how some clever types over in Europe have used sonar type methods to ‘hear’ the location of a writing device on wood. [From Boing Boing]

What’s really interesting about this is that it is another example of technology that could potentially expand the effective size of a small, mobile device without you having to carry something larger. Imagine being able to put a few bluetooth sensors on a wall or table and have your phone or PDA pick up the touch of your finger on that surface? This is similar to the light projection keyboards we’ve already started to see.

The Zen of Jobs

This is an old article, but interesting in its comparison of Steve Jobs presentation style compared to Bill Gates. Sleek, minimal & to the point are the slides of Jobs, cluttered, confusing and visually painful are those of Gates. Partially I find this interesting because Jobs has not really changed his presentation style since the time of the article a year ago. Less is more.

[Thanks to digg]

Launchy – Speed up your life

Launchy is a simple little Windows app that lets you start up applications in an auto-complete, command line idiom – rather than searching through menus or scrambling around your desktop. Once installed and started, you simply press Alt and space together and a window pops up over the top of your screen into which you can immediately start typing the name of a program. Launchy then gives you the best match for the program and, once you have the right one, you just press ‘return’ to launch it. Simple and effective, plus beautifully designed.

[Thanks to Just Use It! for the tip]

Adddress at gmail

Gmail, or ‘Googlemail‘ as it’s known in the British isles, has offered up another of it’s clever features to me today. Not only is it by far the cleanest, most usable web email out there but they also let you do weird and whacky things with your mail address.

First up – periods/full stops are ignored on inbound emails. For the longest time I thought that someone else had grabbed ‘‘ and I wanted it, turns out I already had it because I’d grabbed ‘‘. How stupid did I feel when I found that out? Yes, pretty stupid. So what does this mean, other than I can now have a better formatted email address? Well it means you can register at websites multiple times from the same email address for one thing, which means next time I build a user management component I have to think about filtering Gmail addresses differently. On the flipside it means you can register for sites you think might be annoying by using a variant of your name with random dots in (‘‘ anyone?)

Secondly you can add tags to your username, for example ‘+note@gmail.com’ and then you cna create a filter inside your mail to keep everything neat and tidy. Although apparently many mail servers don’t handle this as well as they should.

What’s really interesting about this is that it reminds us that email is just a related set of protocols that we happen to use in a certain way. There’s no reason why sending an email shouldn’t control something, or behave totally unexpectedly – we’re just used to the end result being an email in someone’s inbox.

That said Google’s mail is sometimes annoying. Emails are all grouped together in a conversation thread when you talk back and forth, so sometimes you can’t immediately see an email you know should be there because it’s been ‘hidden’ underneath a newer mail in the thread. In the old days you could turn this off to have a traditional mail view, but now apparently not – to which the obvious question is.. why not any more?

How long is a piece of meat?

This morning, as I prepared to burn my usual morning cheese & ham on toast, I was struck by how important appearence is to how much you enjoy something. This line of thought was triggered by the ham, thinly sliced from my local deli and nicely wrapped in a plastic sheet. Originally these ten thing slices existed in a large rounded lump, I presume, reconstituted and reformed from smaller lumps of meat as I’m pretty sure pigs don’t grow in that shape. Now if I had to eat directly from that lump, cutting off mouth sized pieces, then I would probably feel a vague sense of nausea. Worse still the thought of biting directly into the bulbous ham lump makes me feel sick to the stomach. Luckily I’ve already eaten my breakfast as I write.

So then what happened? The lovely lady at my local deli took this lump and sliced it thinly, about 1mm thick, then put it into greased paper. The ham is still the same ham, but now I can happily go into my fridge, grab a slice and put it between a couple of slices of bread to make a sandwich that can really be enjoyed. Definately not the same as eating the large gelatinous lump. That simple transition in terms of presentation and also volume, means that I now have something I really want.

Then there’s a third stage – the slices of ham are a bit too large for me to make cheese and ham on toast without the ham hanging over the edge of the bread. So to rectify this situation a slice of ham is taken, ripped raggedly into strips and then placed on the bread before a slice of cheese is added. This simple action creates ham that is emotionally beautiful, more natural and, yes it’s true, tastes better. There’s a fine line though, if a strip is pulled off that isn’t of the same proportion as a wide piece of bacon then it starts to feel more like that earlier lump of ham again. Unnatural and less tasty, even once it can’t be seen through the melted cheese.

So what have I learnt from this? Well aside from never to enter a ham eating contest if they require you to eat it straight from the package, it also demonstrates the importance of presentation. The first bite is with the eye, literally in this case. Taking something basic and packaging it in the right way can make all the difference. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the personal hygiene products market, no longer can you buy just a simple block of soap coloured peach or pink and wrapped in clear plastic. Now, probably the same block of soap, but coloured clear or a murky translucent brown, will be wrapped in thick brown paper tied with a simple, modern bow and have be labelled with retro print block style type. This simple addition of a few cheap ‘ingredients’ will transform the soap from 50c to $3 with no problems, and probably more if you sell it in the right boutique. Plus they make great birthday gifts.