Microsoft Helps Developers of Clinical User Interfaces Improve Efficiency, Patient Safety With Free Toolkit

Healthcare developers will be able to increase patient safety and clinician effectiveness with the new Microsoft(R) Health Common User Interface (CUI), available today from Microsoft Corp. The guidance and software code are available to download at no cost, and are designed to support the delivery of safe patient care across a healthcare system.
http://www.examiner.com/p-37868~Microsoft_Helps_Developers_of_Clinical_User_Interfaces_Improve_Efficiency__Patient_Safety_With_Free_Toolkit.html

ten best design websites

Here you can find a list of ten best design websites. These are author's personal view about the websites, though i agree in some cases.
http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/10-best-designed-web-sites.cfm

manager vs leader by john maeda

Ever since I wrote this I have been thinking about the distinction between a leader and a manager. Today on a drive to music school with my daughter we discussed this concept within her world view as the "line leader" for her classroom (meaning that whenever they have to go somewhere in the school, they form a line/queue).

A manager is the person that designs the construct of a line, sets the expectations for the line to form, thinks through how the line might be best composed and prioritized, and ensures that the queue is executed per spec. On the other hand, a leader is the person that is able to take the line forward in an orderly fashion by setting the example for others, providing the vision for how the line fits into the larger scheme of things, and engages the line-followers in a respectful manner. The manager sets up the win with perfection for her team; the leader executes the win with passion. What is common across these two different roles is that both people need to implement or execute their plans in a participatory nature, otherwise they will surely fail. Because in the end, a manager never manages alone; and a leader surely cannot lead alone either.

8 golden rules of interaction design

8 golden rules of interaction design
1. strive for consistency (managing expectation)
2. cater to universal usability
3. offer informative feedback
4. Design dialogs to yield closure (satisfaction of experience)
5. Prevent errors
6. permit easy reveral of actions
7. Support internal locus of control (especially for experienced users; balance between automation and control)
8. Reduce short-term memory load

Is this device full or empty?

A flash USB drive that changes size depending on how much data is stored on it.

Recognizing gestures: Interface design beyond point-and-click

The most basic and simplest gesture is pointing, and it is an effective method for most people to communicate with each other, even in the presence of language barriers. However, pointing quickly fails as a way to communicate when the object or concept that a person is trying to convey is not in sight to point at. Taking gesture recognition beyond simple pointing greatly increases the type of information that two people can communicate with each other. Gesture communication is so natural and powerful that parents are increasingly using it to enable their babies to engage in direct, two-way communication with their care givers, through baby sign language, long before the babies can clearly speak.

http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6466206

4 definitions of interaction design

4 definitions of interaction design

Physics - a mutual or reciprocal (bilateral, two-sided) action or influence

Transfer of energy between elementery particles/fields

A way of exchanging information and tell your wishes (to the thing you as a user are interacting with)

inter - prefix meaning among or between
action - something done, beeing active, a natural process, series of events that form a plot or a story

A dailogue; outspoken or partly subconcious (taking place in the real world but consequences of the dialogue may exist i your mind)

Good interaction is more like a dialogue - the more input the better result - more interactivity. This differ interaction from reaction. How to use more senses than just your eyes - information that's tangible, physical, or social interaction through technology.

Come Fly With Us

An installation made by me at dotdotdot,Italy.
My favorite one.

ibar-the largest multitouch screen

Though this video is very old, but still a nice one.

What is the world coming to..

Check out this site to see which part of the world you want to stay away from http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

India innovates: Nivio - a Windows based online desktop

Having been in the services space for about close to 4 years now I have always been waiting for the software as a service concept to become more of a reality in our day to day lie and apart from all the great things that Microsoft has done and is in the process of doing in this space reading about Nivio today certainly made me feel that we are one step closer. What excites me more is that its a bunch of Indians from Delhi who did this. An on-line windows based desktop which could help the user roam his complete desktop including applications and data across machines. It also gets the user out of the buiness of installing and maintaining different applications and dealing with a lot of computer maintenance issues. How they would monetize this is yet to see, but for a beta release it surely seems quite promising, only unfortunate to see all the open office stuff available for free but then again its open office. But the way I look at it, it does have a lot of potential mainly in the small business, student and even a regular PC user of today.. this can open up a complete new avenue for subscriptions, ad sales, application sharing, networking.. the applications are just infinite if done right. Given all these advantages, I guess I would like to see how the whole aspect of security and privacy shapes up in this space.

Although I must say, its quite frustrating that Microsoft could not come up with something like this even after the fact that we actually bought Softricity.. I would blame to the same problem I see in Microsoft - time to market is way to long.. maybe its the bureaucracy or just the way we plan this, it just scares me sometimes. I just hope nobody else beats us to this.

As for now check out more on Nivio at
http://www.nivio.com/

New Social website from Yahoo called Yahoo Mash

The service includes features common to Facebook, MySpace, and My Yahoo. You can load a set of modules onto your profile page and move them around drag-and-drop style. The modules include Flickr RSS, Ego Boost, Common Friends, MyMoshLog2, Blog Module (RSS 2.0), Asteroids, Astrology, PimpMyPet, Hover, Kaleidescope, Guestbook, and My Stuff.

Please visit: www.mash.yahoo.com
Let me know if anyone requires invitation to create profile...so that I can invite them.Please send me your email address so in order to send you invitation.

New stuff - Popfly from Microsoft, create your own webpages etc online ..

Popfly is the fun and easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, and Web pages. It’s made up of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups and a social network where you can host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users

Look at the beta version of Popfly launched yesterday at Web 2.0 Summit.
http://www.popfly.com/overview/

bad design

A few days back, on IXDA discussion list there was a nice discussion about "bad designs".
And quite interesting tag i found was " a badly design site about bad designs". Have a look.

http://www.baddesigns.com/examples.html

tangible interaction

check out the presentations from Sketching in Hardware 2007.
It's a who's who of the people working on the front lines.
http://www.sketching07.com/participants.html

lift 2008

Lift 2008 program is out.
Nicholas Nova-Editorial Manager
check this:
http://www.liftconference.com/lift08-program-page

microsoft's mind reading patent

Microsoft applied for a patent to monitor user's brain waves to understand how good (or bad) their interfaces are. Filed on August 9, 2007, the patent application, #20070185697, describes a method of classifying EEG data in a way that separates the wheat from the chaff. From the patent application
microsoft's mind reading patent

steve jobs presentation on new OS leopard

Watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote preview of Mac OS X “Leopard” from San Francisco's Moscone West.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc06/