Asterisks - our new label for brief notes of interest. In this case, items that relate to the visual, auditory and tactile senses.
- Visual - Rafe Needleman of CNET writes about "The Myth of Width: When widescreens don't work". He takes on the ongoing trend of widescreen format displays in a range of consumer products, a presentation form that isn't always task approrpriate:
One area where I believe we should (but probably won't) see continued releases of consumer portrait-mode displays, though: personal navigation devices. Recently the PND companies have started to offer wide-screen navigation units. How does this make sense? When we use a computer-generated map that's always rotating to show us where we're going at the top of the screen, why do we care what's out the side windows? It's what's coming up that matters. Serious navigation products for back-country hikers are portrait mode. The wider you make a map display the more you sacrifice useful information for distraction--although, again, it makes the devices look cool.
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Auditory & Tactile - File this one under why didn't I think of that? Carnegie Mellon University researchers are using simple microphones and software to turn virtually an surface into a gestural-based controller. From a tabletop to your leg. See the video for a clear technical explanation (from the interaction-focused site johnnyholland.org)
