iTunes - 10,000 downloads in 5 minutes

On my way to office, I happen to visit the Apple website where they have a countdown for 10 billionth song download (Yes that's not a mistake, its 10 and nor 1). The person who buys the 10 billionth song gets 10,000 USD iTunes credit.

While looking at the counter, I realised that the downloads were going on really fast, so I decided to count. In just 5 minutes, there were 10,000 songs downloaded. WOW, thats a huge number.

Don't know if anything can come anywhere close to this in numbers.

Heres a screenshot from my phone:

Mobile augmented reality

Layar is a free application on your mobile phone which shows what is around you by displaying real time digital information on top of reality through the camera of your mobile phone.

Sneak Preview at some UI trends

Sixth Sense:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

Perspective Pixels:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA59CgXH7Ts

WiiMote Hack:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html

Siftables:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_merrill_demos_siftables_the_smart_blocks.html

Touch free gesture control

California based Canesta is developing a camera that can see subjest in 3D and thereby track there position and gestures. This will allow for touch free gesture control.

This technology is likely to appear in TV's and Media PC's initially.

So now you can wave at your TV :)

Hitachi has already tied up with Canesta.

Audio UI

Apple announced the new iPod "small talk".

The iPod that can talk back.

Now that sound interesting from interaction design point of view. 

Anything apple always excites you first, doesn't it?

but then I got back into really thinking about it. 

What is it trying to tell me. 

When I read through the details, I found that the controls are integrated into the string of the earbud. Now thats not convenient. Ear buds usually last a few months. THen you would like to replace them. The earbuds with control might be costlier then the ones without controls.

Ofcourse there are good points as well. 4GB for USD 80 is a good price for such a device.

The introduction of the talk back feature really brings a DJ/RJ into the iPod. 

More interesting for me is that it prepares the mainstream users for the Audio UI. This might be just the begining to get voice controlled user interfaces into the mainstream products.

Interaction Design Guide for Touchscreen Applications

http://www.sapdesignguild.org/resources/TSDesignGL/Index.htm

Microsoft Vision-2019

Here is a visual representation of what Microsoft looks ahead in the future from user interface point of view:

Although a good vision, it lacks narrative. WIthout a commentary, these are just nice visuals to look at.

Its more on the side of an 'infomercial'.