A lot of the problems I see Yahoo making over and over again stem from its failure to really embrace the spirit of its failed Brickhouse project and give levity and space to its engineers to invent. Yahoo aren’t the only company making this mistake.

Brickhousing
On establishment, Brickhouse was shaped to be a pocket monster of an invention studio. Set in the startup hub of central SF, its mission was to recapture the startup vibe in Yahoo. While it produced some interesting projects like Fire Eagle, it was for all intents and purposes, a phantom limb for nurturing innovation in Yahoo proper.

There seemed to be a lot of problems that stunted Brickhouse’s impact. Not being on the main campus was a massive problem. Not just for the Brickhouse imagineers feeling the beat of the HQ, but also for reinvesting that innovation and reenergising the body of Yahoo. It’s difficult to motivate people at the coalface of an organisation working on the mundane but shipping parts of a site, when you’ve created a special hip beast in central SF and annointed them as the engine of the org’s R&D effort going forward. Who wants to be shipping yesterday’s software?

Revolving Chiefs, Revolving Goals

Leadership was going in circles. A lot of tech vets ran through the doors of Brickhouse – Salim Ismail (now at Singularity U), Chad Dickerson (now head of Etsy), Caterina Fake (Flickr, Hunch). It all seems a bit chicken and egg. No doubt the exec bounce rate was inextricably linked to Yahoo’s existential crisis. A crisis completely characterised by the infamous Peanut Butter Manifesto written by the former SVP Brad Garlinghouse in 2006 just as the Brickhouse was was finding its feet. A crisis that included Yahoo buying Zimbra in 2007 for $350m, a company who’s mailbox architecture was seen by Yahoo as an undoubted opening salvo against Google Apps dominance

The acquisition of Zimbra will help Yahoo! to expand its presence in universities, businesses and through ISPs by enabling organizations to host e-mail on or off premises with their own domain.

Zimbra was then punted to VMware less than three years later, with Yahoo still committed to using its technology for its mail and calendar products. A double-whammy. Yahoo basically said we don’t want to architect Zimbra’s IP, but because of dependancies with our architecture, we’ll be at the mercy of your decision-making, Mr VMware. Basically.

It’s damn clear that rebellion was ricocheting at lots of levels of Yahoo – the manifesto, execs and key product people leaving. The effect was astounding. Acquisitions were bolted on hap-hazardly. Partnerships on roads to nowhere inked – search deals with Samsung and RIM etc while the iPhone quietly hoovered up marketshare.

But all of that is now in the past. Or is it? There’s a lot of commentary on the web saying that Yahoo needs to embrace its present company DNA and just decide it’s a media organisation rather than a technology company. Yahoo, the media org is at first-glance is an easier value proposition to understand. It has properties to drive – Yahoo! Finance and Mail are still well eyeballed but I fail to see the impetus to reinvent these properties if Yahoo decides just to be a media company. Yes, media organisations like the Guardian do very well – thank you very much. But Yahoo will never be the Guardian. And it probably shouldn’t try to be.

And stirrings of the impending sale of Yahoo shouldn’t come as a surprise. Packaging the whole company. If I’ve learned anything from Pretty Woman it’s that selling off a company in well-rounded units rather than a confusing maw of properties makes sense. Which is why I am intrigued to read reports of possible sale of the company is on the cards. Maybe going private is what needs to happen, but a private monster is still a monster.

The Noun Project on the development of the Pioneer and Voyager plaques.

A brief history of the corporation. On the forgotten bubbles. Have we all read this, no?  Via Jason.

Making Braun cool – Mr Dieter Rams.

Interesting post where Kickstarter examines the durations of projects and go shorter.

Breakdancing and brainstorming..

Animated neon movie posters.

Is your iPhone passcode here?

Interesting to see the correlation of X Factor competitors still in the running and Facebook likes, huh?

A place to share ideas.

Javascript IDE for iPhone.

Sweet Air France playlist.

Y Combinator’s Startup School videos from last weekend are well worth a gander.

Via Christine, the Guardian’s interactive chart where you can choose the UK public spending cuts.

Interesting WSJ piece on Facebook’s VP of Product, Chris Cox.

One of those What If moments.

Are trends becoming obsolete?

Deconstructing American maps.

The hidden posters of Notting Hill tube station.

The Orange study of the recent UK election on the Internet.

College open days as iPhone apps, adding more accessibility?

Let’s talk about one – election.ie. She’s been on hiatus too.

Truth be told, I had a brush with news recently. And for as much as the idea of constantly reading and writing is second nature to me, the experience changed my opinion on where election.ie should go. In some subtle ways thematically and in other ways structurally and editorially.

In wanting to carve out election.ie’s own voice, I fell into a trap of wanting to publish rather than looking at balls of the subject and prodding it a little. I need to get the mantra of not trying to get everything right and just concentrate on a few of the right things. I want to fully bake the election.ie idea and build out a refresh before our next General Election.

The way the British General Election has been covered online also changed my views. Channel 4 news did an excellent job on Twitter, Grandma Beeb was ever dependable on stats and well, Sky were just Sky but with the best iPhone app and HD to check out Adam Boulton’s engorged pores.

So, election.ie will be back soon. I’ll post some of my pol stuff here in the meantime. More to come.

This lunchtime, Microsoft showed off their new Windows Mobile 7 operating system at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Font and UI-wise, its DNA is firmly in Camp Zune. I’d love to play with one to see if I will jump from iPhone. Oh yes.. More details at Windows Phone 7 Series site.

(Disclosure: I work for Microsoft)

Google Store Views – what’s next?

Cat hammock.

Big Bang.

Twitter Code Swarm a visualisation of Twitter’s growth by Ben Sandofsky via the new Twitter Engineering Blog.

The new free RTE News Now iPhone application with news stories and streaming news. Via Damien. (iTunes link!)

The Observer interviews Brian Eno.

Tracking the real-time web.

Charting the Beatles for your infographic consideration.

Watched the BBC’s Hotel California docu again over the weekend. If you’re a 70′s folk rock moosic fan, you have to check it out.

Snippet on Gram Parsons and Linda Ronstadt

iTunes cannot sync photos to the iPhone “Alexia’s iPhone” because the folder “iphone” cannot be found

The message was driving me batty and no amount of disabling and reenabling photo syncing seemed to work. This morning, though, I deleted the Photo Cache and it fixed the issue. This issue can repro on iPods too.

If you’re on a Mac like me then you can:

1. Make sure you disconnect your iPod/iPhone
2. Open the Pictures folder – /Pictures
3. Holding down Control, right-click on “iPhoto Library”. (I use right-click, can’t shake Windows habits!)
4. Select “Show Package Contents”
5. Delete the “iPod Photo Cache”
6. Connect your iPod/iPhone and sync like usual

The Appvent Calendar – a free iPhone game every day.

Is it beer o’clock yet?

The perfect way to slice a pizza.

Skype’s Live Phonebox Experiment- Man + remote phonebox – to promote their cheap international service.

Christmas Lights Hero

Screencaptures of the Radio 1 iPhone app:

Screencaptures of the 2fm iPhone app:

Interesting exhibition ‘Bits ‘n Pieces’ in the NYC, exploring where digital meets analogue in a post-Digital world.

Contrasting the UI of Android and iPhone for developers in terms of app customisation.

The Cookie Card! Via Nathalie.

Daily Drop Cap.

That Vodafone Symphonia spot. 1000 phones. 1812 Overtureness. Making Of Part 1 and Part 2.

The Realex Payments Irish Web Awards 2009 winners list. So many talented peeps nominated. Another year of working in an amazing team. Grateful. Am sure I annoyed the heck of out patient Stephen. Video is my nemesis. * bows *

Trends are trending.

Prescient urban advertising.

UXing print newspapers.

iPhone app for predicting flight delays (US only at the min).

Believe in God. Instantly.

Of Disney and Menstruation

Cast of Terminus discuss the play. Opens at the Peacock stage in the Abbey on November 11th – running until early December. And the show is touring to Cork, Belfast, Longford and Galway.

Say you’re out and about with your iPhone, wouldn’t be it handy to be able to create a new playlist in iPod and add songs to it? You don’t want Genius to guesstimate the playlist, you know how the playlist should build and boom.

There isn’t an option to do this on iPhone at present. Ooops. The amount of time one spends away from iTunes far outweighs the time they spend syncing with the library open. Therefore, even basic access to organise playlists seems a no-brainer. The decision to organise and finetune playlists might be one of those jobs you’d like to be able to do on that long bus ride home or while waiting to meet someone.

Maybe it’ll come in the next iTunes and iPhone OS updates? * crosses fingers *

Redmum snaps an ickle rock star.

On photobloggers.. details on the Dublin Worldwide Photowalk happening this Saturday.

Ninja magnetism.

Flickr reverse geotagging dohicky – Boundaries.

How to get noticed in the App Store.

Department of Eagles ‘In Ear Park’

The International Space Station captures the Three Gorges Dam.

The Other Back Stuff makes drip coffee gadget reviews scientific and sexy.

Moments captured by Rosie Hardy.

I shot the serif.

Real-life Ryu

Techcrunch capture the pulsating Apple App Wall at WWDC. Each pulse means a purchase!

Via Pat, the Stanford iPhone development course is iTunesed! Yes, UCC are hosting one too!

SEO gurus Red Cardinal are offering 5 sites, a free conversion rate optimisation campaign worth €3,000!

Damien on marketing a hotel online.

Ways the real-time web is shaping our information.

Mother Goody?

Design should be iterative, not a flat phased process.

Via Charles. A hand-stenciled floor to die for.

Exploring the work of the Ball-Nogues Studio.

Cinema Paradiso

Top 25 iPhone apps. Games are well represented!

Marketing in the Post-Consumer Era.

Marking how Science Fiction words hop to Science.

Cheeky underground photos. (May be NFSW)

The Life and Death of Ice Cream. Via Ice Cream Ireland.

Brian Eno & David Byrne ‘Everything That Happens’ (No visuals)

If you want to be added to this list, drop me an email at alexia < at > golez.net.

I reserve the right of addition. Not interested in adding people that don’t interact or are greedy with followers.

Yes, plans to make it easy to navigate and, possibly, searchable are on the cards.

Media

Broadcast

• The Holiday Show: @theholidayshow
• The Last Word: @lstwrd
• Morning Ireland: @morning_ireland
• Newstalk Breakfast Show: @breakfastnt
• Phantom 105.2: @phantom1052
• Dublin’s Q102: @dublinsq102
  

Radio Personalities

• Ray Foley – Today FM: @rayfoleyshow
• George Hook – Newstalk: @ghook
• Sean Moncrieff – Newstalk: @SeanMoncrieff
• Rick O’Shea – 2fm: @rickoshea

Publications (Print & Online):

• Analogue Magazine: @analoguemag
• Irish Times: @the_irish_times
• Irish Sentinel – Satirical site: @irishsentinel
• Day and Night Magazine (Irish Independent): @dayandnightmag
• Life and Fitness Magazine: @derryo
• Media Contact: @Mediaflash

Journalists

• Marie Boran – SiliconRepublic: @PixieVonDust
• John Collins – Irish Times: @jaycee001
• Mark Coughlan: @Mark_Coughlan
• Richard Delevan – Guardian: @rdelevan
• Kilian Doyle – Irish Times: @kilian_doyle
• Tadhg Enright – RTE: @tadhgenright
• Shane Hegarty – Irish Times: @shanehegarty
• Harry McGee – Irish Times: @harrymcgee
• Hugh Linehan – Irish Times: @hlinehan
• Mark Little – RTE: @marklittlenews
• Adam Maguire: @adammaguire
• Dick O’Brien – Sunday Business Post: @dickobrien
• Chas Taylor – Irish Times: @ChasTaylor
• Adrian Weckler – Sunday Business Post: @adrianweckler

Events

Monthly

• Refresh Belfast – Monthly designer meet: @refreshbelfast
• Dublin Twook Club – Monthly book meet: @dublintwookclub

Less than monthly

• Cork Open Coffee: @CorkOpenCoffee
• Tuesday Push – Fortnightly startup blog event: @tuesdaypush

Arts & Culture

Artists

• Allan Cavanagh: @AllanCavanagh
• Eolaí gan Fhéile: @eolai
• The Stenner: @stenner

Music

• EMI Music Ireland: @EMI_Music_IRE
• Meteor Music Awards: @MIMA2009

Literature

• Poetry Ireland: @poetryireland

Professional Services

Advertising, PR & Marketing

• Denise Cox: @denisecox
• Dave Davis – Redfly: @redfly
• Paula Eager – MKC: @paulaeager
• ICAN Advertising: @icanadvertising
• Nick McGivney – copywriter and satirist: @nmcgivney
• Liz McGonigal – EMcGPR: @LizMcGPR
• Rachel Morrogh – Insight Consultants: @RachelMorrogh
• Laura O’Mahony – Hothead Media: @hotheadmedia
• Simply Zesty: @simplyzesty
• Thinkhouse PR: @thinkhouse
• Catherine Wilson: @cathwilson

Livestyle

• eBookers – travel site: @ebookersie
• Daft – home rental and sales: @daftmedia
• WeddingDates – wedding venue search: @weddingdates

Associations & Societies

• Irish Internet Association: @iia

Programming

• Ian Quigley – .Net: @IanQuigley

Design

• Martin Duggan – visual branding and UI design: @MDDdesign
• Jennifer Farley – graphic and print design: @Laughing_Lion

Business

Founders & Execs

• Robin Blandford – Founder of Decisions for Heroes: @robinb
• Keith Bohanna – Co-founder of dbTwang: @keithbohanna
• John Breslin – Researcher & Co-founder of Boards.ie: @johnbreslin
• Fergus Burns – CEO of Nooked: @fergusb
• Joe Drumgoole – CEO of Put Place: @jdrumgoole
• Deborah Hadley – Founder of Spicendicity: @debz
• Aileen Hannan  – Co-founder of SortMyBooks: @aileen456
• Walter Higgins – Founder of Sxoop: @walter
• Calaen King -  CEO & Founder of RevaHealth: @revahealth
• Stephen McCarron – General Manager of Hosting365: @smccarron
• Anton Mannering – CEO of Udoogoo: @antonmannering
• Michele Neylon – Founder of Blacknight: @mneylon
• Conn O’Muineachain – Founder of Edgecast Media: @conn
• Conor O’Neill – Founder & CEO of LouderVoice: @conoro
• Pat Phelan – CEO of Cubic Telecom & Blogger: @patphelan
• Paul Walsh – Founder of Segala & BIMA chair: @paulwalsh

Education

• Gabriela Avram – University of Limerick: @gabig58
• Educate Together: @EducateTogether
• Bernie Goldbach – Tipperary Institute: @topgold
• Stephen Kinsella – University of Limerick: @stephenkinsella
• iPhone App School: @iphoneappschool
• Liam Noonan – Tipperary Institute: @vpn
• National College of Ireland: @NCIRL
• SQL Training: @sqttraining
• Tipperary Institute: @tippinst

Social Hubs

Networks

• Pixie – Photosharing site: @pixie
• MUZU TV – Music playlisting site: @MUZUTV

Portals

• LouderVoice – Consumer review site: @loudervoice
• Daft.ie -Property site: @daftmedia

Communities

• Boards.ie: @boards_ie

Consumer

Telecommunications

• eMobile: @emobileireland
• Eircom: @eircom
• Meteor: @meteor_mobile
• O2: @Talk2O2
• Vodafone Ireland: @vodafoneireland

Entertainment

• Moviestar – Movie rental service: @moviestar
• Movies.ie – Movie news and reviews site: @movies_ie
• Irish Music TV: @IrishMusicTV

Food & Drink

• Bewley’s Ireland – Tea & coffee retailers: @BewleysIreland
• Cheap Eats: @CheapEatsDotIE
• Herbstreet – Dublin eatery: @herbstreet
• Look and Taste: @lookandtaste
• Slow Food West Cork: @SlowFoodWCork
• Small Sips: @smallsips
• RF Wine: @rfwine
• Tastie Tweets: @tastietweets
• Twecipe: @twecipe

Travel

• Irish Breaks: @irishbreak
• Ryanair Cork offers: @Ryanair_ORK
• Ryanair Dublin offers: @Ryanair_DUB
• Ryanair Shannon offers: @Ryanair_SNN
• Outdoors Ireland – Kerry adventure breaks: @OutdoorsIreland

Web & Internet

• Blacknight: @blacknight
• Magnet: @magnetnetworks

Technology & Gadgets

• Komplett: @komplettie

Politics & Government

Political Parties

• Fianna Fáil: @fiannafailparty
• Green Party: @greenparty_ie
• Labour Party: @labour

Politicians

National

• Ciaran Cuffe – Green Party TD: @ciarancuffe
• Paschal Donoghue – Fine Gael Senator: @paschald

Local

• Mannix Flynn – Independent: @mannixflynn
• Dermot Looney – Labour: @dlooney

Government Bodies

• Bord Bia – food, drink and horticulture body: @anbordbia

Sport

Venues

• AVIVA Stadium – new FAI and IRFU stadium: @AVIVAStadium

League of Ireland

• League of Ireland Teams – http://twitter.com/LeagueofIreland
• Athlone Town  – http://twitter.com/AthloneTownFC
• Bohemian FC – http://twitter.com/bohemianfc
• Bray Wanderers – http://twitter.com/BrayWanderers
• Cork City – http://twitter.com/corkcityfc
• Derry City – http://twitter.com/derrycityfc
• Dundalk FC – http://twitter.com/DundalkFC
• Galway United – http://twitter.com/GalwayUtd
• Kildare County – http://twitter.com/kildarecountyfc
• Mervue United – http://twitter.com/Mervue_United
• Monaghan United – http://twitter.com/MonaghanUtdFC
• Shamrock Rovers – http://twitter.com/ShamrockRovers
• Shelbourne FC – http://twitter.com/shelsfc
• Shelbourne Supporters Development Group – http://twitter.com/ssdg
• Sligo Rovers – http://twitter.com/sligorovers
• Sporting Fingal – http://twitter.com/SportingFingal
• St. Patrick’s Athletic – http://twitter.com/stpatsfc
• UCD AFC – http://twitter.com/ucdupdates
• Waterford United – http://twitter.com/waterfordunited
• Wexford Youths FC – http://twitter.com/WYFC

Bloggers

Individuals

• Damien Mulley: @damienmulley
• Lily Collison: @lilinator
• Suzy Byrne: @suzybie
• Tommy Collison: @trusttommy
• Twenty Major: @twentymajor

Music

• Niall Byrne: @nialler9

Local Interest

• Limerick Blogger: @limerickblogger
• Limerick Newswire: @Newswire99

Leisure & Sport

• Arse Blog – Arsenal fan blog: @arseblog
• Nathan Kingerlee: @NathanKingerlee
• My Munster: @mymunster

The Munster Express iPhone app.

Get nominating your favourite blogs for the Irish Blog Awards 2009!

A bad time for conversation.

The Twply kerfuffle highlights when the rabid appetite for shiny things overwhelms good sense. How would this work out if the owner of such a service nabbed the passwords of “A-Listers” and promptly changed them? Want scruples with those sprinkles?

Top 20 fastest-growing Facebook applications.

Bit of an Android cynic, but an Android-powered netbook looks exciting. Mobile is becoming less and less of a label.

Is that a wee Universe in your pocket? An Illustrated Guide to the Amazing Feats of the Night Sky 2009.

 
ASCII sound wave via TypeNeu.

The Felice Brothers ‘Waterspider’

At this time of year, people are compiling lists all over shop – best albums, greatest movies, favourite celebs, wishlists and such..

I’m not an arbiter of fashion and I don’t have hallowed taste, but I’m a fan of:

• Pat Phelan: Business whiz, Telecoms God * genuflects *, massive-hearted guy, family man and a good friend. Inspiring me everyday. I’m convinced he has a naturally occurring no-bullshit forcefield about him.
• JP Rangaswami: Someday, I want to freewheel like JP does. I’m sure he throws away a hundred ideas a day that I’d fight to develop in a month.
• Niall Harbison: Chefy genius, workaholic that mainlines on video, possibly certifiable and overly generous opening his home to a bunch of blogger nerds. Has a massive charitable soul too.
• Luas: Gets me from home to work everyday. Fast, cheap and dependable. And happens to have an ‘ickle carbon footprint. The way public transport ought to be designed. Simple as.
• Tazo Calm Tea: The reason a kettle was invented. Chamomile and Mint.. Do it.
• iPhone: I don’t think I can ever go back to conventional phones again. My holiday with Loanershitphone almost did me in. The iPhone has it all – email, good browsing experience, phone, SMS, bad camera and music all on tap. Still coo at it.

Got any things you’re a fan of?

Is coincidence godly?

Some interesting Facebook demographic stats. 

Mr Ericsson CTO says mobile broadband tech will hit speeds of 42Mbps next year. Maybe we’ll see it in 2054. 

LP Cover Lover. Vintage LP covers. (NSFW)

Bob the Builder is an evil machine genius. 

Good, cheap or fast..

Sad Kermit ‘New York, I Love You’

There’s something very a-ha about the white Touch Diamond. I kinda like it, whaddya think?

Stats me like. Apple releases the Top 10 iPhone app download charts for 2008. 

Interesting piece on designing user interfaces for different resolutions.

Ding, ding, ding… Reverberate marketing!

Want! Via Sinead. 

Type Trumps!

The Thinking Man’s Commandments for end of year music lists. 

Battles ‘Leyndecker’. No Ben, they are not the dyslexic Beatles. 

Irish iPhone user? Mulley Communications is giving away a €50 iTunes voucher. To enter all you need to do is fill out a survey. I’ve done it already. Easy peasy. 

Love this from Russell. Dawdlr – the ultimate in retro status updates via postcard. 

Christmas gift idea for Grandma by artist James Joyce. (NSFW) 

Zipper jewels. 

Mesmo – a very cool t-shirt store. I wish I could directly link in there. Geometrics rule, although the scream shirt is nice too. 

Sigur Ros ‘Gong’ (fan)

Original photo by StrangrThanCandy

Multi-touch. It’s beginning to change how we think about interacting with computers and devices all around it.

In a land so young, what fruits can multi-touch bear for us? And are we ready for its ubiquitous debut?

Contextual feedback

So far the mass-market multi-touch screens we’ve seen in demos and on the street are all oneway. Won’t it be really interesting when the screen touches us back? Contextual feedback is going to be massive. And it’s already here – in a fashion.

The vibrate function is a contextual feedback alert. Caveman as it is, it is a cheap and cheery of the alerting attention of the phone user. It’s already plugged into the AudioServicesPlaySystemSound function of the iPhone SDK. But imagine making this function beefier, imagine using it in space.

Spatial Awareness

The iPhone’s firmware 2.2 is due for release next week and one of the big feature wins we are promised is Google Street View on the iPhone. I wonder what baked-in gestures we’ll get. What will it be like to play with? Rotating aspect is going to be fun. Multi-touch and spatial interaction could offer some really nice scenarios.

Taking this to computerland, Apple is already looking at making the trackpad a big Kahuna. A space where trackpad touches and keyboard functions are bundled together. Could a super trackpad also give feedback with changes in terrain or topology on the screen? A vibrate sensation that gets stronger as you scroll across distinctive landmarks on a map perhaps?  There are so many interesting directions reactive contextual feedback could be used on multitouch surfaces.

Are you sure you want fries with that?

Imagine being able to setup sites on your iPhone that could alert you when important decisions are need to be made and yes/no choice needs to be taken. I’m not advocating for a UAC system, but rather an opt-in preference console, where you can define the sites and actions that you want to be alerted on. This would have to be a browser specific preference.

You may only use this function on one or two sites, but it would be used in taking important decision-making actions. Imagine being able to setup an alert when you are making important banking transfers. A reminder, a notification.

The important thing to stress about this feature is that it has to be opt-in. And it has to be secure.

Global Sensual Support

How many benefits could contextual feedback on trackpad make those with visual disabilities? Imagine the power of listening for and projecting touch to those users? And not in a specialised/expensive way either. Accessibility touch stylee.

Were this technology readily available on laptops with trackpads or plug and play peripherals for the desktop, users could simply turn it on. Mass adoption of this technology by manufacturers means universal availability, so moving from one computer to the next is not a trial.

Multi-touch Bubble

In the last OpenCoffee, after watching the Windows 7 demo from PDC the topic of multi-touch technology came up – is it viable? / who uses it? / would it be bad ergonomics? / perhaps multi-touch perpherals are the future? Interesting thoughts.

Wouldn’t it be nice to take the idea of a multi-touch as addedum to your desktop and make it a peripheral too? Call it the Multi-touch Bubble (sexy name comes later after my Angel round!).

The Bubble is so named as it’s a shallow hemisphere. Something that feels good in my palm. A place to rest my hand and when I want to use Multi-touch, an easy place to rotate, zoom or move my content.  You see I’m lazy. I don’t want unnecessary fiddling to find my Multi-touch device. I want a hammock.

The hemisphere is sunk into a moate. My fingers want space to twist too. And the surface must be strong, yet something I want to touch. Preferably, I want a surface that feels like  warm marble  (an impossibility, I know). Perhaps a smooth compound? Alu, metal or cheap plastic is not a place I want to rest my hand on for extended periods. Think of the sweat. Eugh.

So the Bubble will have all of the standard multi-touch gestures, like rotate, pinch etc, would it be nice to play teacher too? You ought to be able to train the Bubble. Imagine it has a clear surface. When I choose to train the Bubble, coloured tracks of my fingers tracing the movement are replayed back to me. I can see a real-time replay of the gesture and then map it to some movement I record or describe to the training software. I don’t have all the answers, but simply having the option to train new gestures outside the scope of standard interactions expands my Bubble’s multi-touch language.

There are just so many applications of the Bubble too. For example, can you imagine having a Bubble as the head of the gear stick in your car. Having immediate access to climate controls or your stereo, without moving your attention from the road. Amazing. I’d love a robocar of the future with one of those.

Ideas, Shmideas – The Future is in Our Homes

Multi-touch is such a young technology. Devices that use it won’t be the sorts of Jetson tech demos we’re used to seeing. It’s far more likely that embedded devices will slowly and silently adopt multi-touch as a big UI path. Gadgets in our homes, like microwaves or washing machines.

It’s likely that many devices with manual knobs and switches will turn to multi-touch interfaces to simplify and humanise their control panels. I’d love to see my mother use a multi-touch dryer, wouldn’t you?

News broke last night that the iPhone has finally surpassed the Motorola RAZR, the ubiquitous cell, as America’s top-selling mobile phone this quarter. That’s big news. Big, big news. Why? Not only does it mark a major change in the game of user expectations in what constitutes a mobile phone.

It’s easy to wax lyrical about the iPhone’s Multitouch touchscreen technology or the thinking that went into understanding user workflow scenarios like the seamless move from iPod to phone call back to iPod. What’s more interesting is how the App Store and iTunes have changed phone users behaviour from passive to occasional, if not habitual consumers of downloads. Some of which are paid.

It can’t be very long before we every other mobile phone operator/operating system or cooperatives of them combined offering similar Application marketplaces. And much like every other standards war = VHS v Betamax, there will be long drawn out maneuvers. Leaving this aside, can the model of an App Store be moved and used elsewhere?

What the iPhone has given Apple, is the much hallowed Halo effect where Mac sales have picked up. That’s the hardware world. What’s really fascinating to think about, is can a micropayment marketplace take off on the desktop or rather through the desktop? For example, say I was in the market for real photo-editing tool. Something semi-pro. The Devil in me would salivate at pro Photoshop, the Pragmatist shirk. Wouldn’t the jump to downloading and/or renting only those features I use be an easier pill to swallow? How long before I decide I want more of product X? Woo me with features and nab my custom with ease of use and minimal overhead.

Is it very far-fetched to believe that in the near future, I could simply rent pro features off Photoshop on desktop (be through client software or the web). I’m not talking Photoshop Express. No dumbed down features. Perhaps, the industry is waiting on cloud computing to hit that price sweet spot. The potential customers are there. Now, who’ll be the first desktop/desktop-accessible Application Store?

Yet again, Dell get the social web. Here’s their community site. Still a way to go, but a nice start. Via Joseph.

Multi-touch using only a webcam. 

The iPhone Flip Clock app - customisable with your own photos. (iTunes Store link)

King of Kong Kill Screen tee.

Love this. Walk on genii. 

Isobel Campbell feat. Mark Lanegan ‘Saturday’s Gone’. Slideshow vid, but quality tune.