Quick links

Thing have been fairly quite here, mainly because of the heavy workload of the semester. It'll be over real soon so stay tuned for some user interface rants as usual.

In the mean time, some quick links:

Over at subtraction.com, Khoi Vinh talks about a surprisingly nice feature in Apple's address book application.

Rich Ziade, of basement.org writes about Framing Software: communicating specific workflows by actually turning features off. And it's especially interesting that someone is talking about taking features off of 37signals' applications.

Inspiring tactile interfaces

Demos of tactile interfaces are always very inspiring. They often present stuff like futuristic new input methods and some creative software that goes along.

Stuff like Jeff Han's demonstration at TED or the TactaPad really makes you drool over your browser. But I think that even smaller input method innovations are inspiring as well. When I heard about 3DConnexions' devices for the first time I was really excited. I even thought about the possibilities of trying to build something similar with a 2nd trackball mouse connected to my PC.

I think my general point is that even slight innovations in existing input methods can seed the creations of new applications. Even more moderate stuff as the MacBook Pro's multitouch touch pad (1 finger for pointing the cursor, 2 fingers for scrolling) can enable, for example, 3 fingers 3d panning (in ZBrush perhaps?), etc.

Great flash sites

Mathieu Badimon creates some great flash websites.

These include some vector manipulation games at the 'lab' and some great windowish interface at communicationresponsable

[via computerlove]