Mint Usability

I started a new photography project and since the result of that project would be flooding the front page with just photos I removed them from front page.

You can see them by going to the Photography category: http://www.mintusability.com/category/photography/

Also check out the post detailing 365 Photos 

For some time now people (analysts?) have been predicting the death of a computer mouse, by touchscreen and lately by multi-touch. I’m, however, going to claim that both of those technologies are absolutely outgunned by a simple Logitech. And as a cherry on the top, I’m going to give my take on the computer mouse killer.

Why touch-technology has lost already

The statement that simple touch technology is going to be replacing the mouse is just simply dimwitted. Why? Simply because they are used in two completely different context: Whereas touch-screen rock the handheld world, computer mouse reigns as the sole emperor of the desktop computing. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love touchscreens and even multi-touch, however, neither of them have the power or the ergonomics of even the simplest 5€ mouse, when it comes to desktop computing. Just think of the time you use your computer daily; 2 hours? 4 hours? For me it would be something like 8-10 hours. Now, keep your hand pointed to the screen, as you would be clicking a button on it, and see how long you can go. Now, do the same test with the mouse. See the difference? On continuous use, mouse wins hands down. Sure, touchscreens are intuitive but when it comes to desktop use, they just suck. Unless. And this is big if, unless the whole paradigm of desktop computing changes to something drastically different.

Then what?

Today I stumbled upon an article (Apple vs. Palm) in Engadget, where they analyze the rather blunt patent infringement threat that Apple made towards Palm (and Android) when asked what do they think of ‘em. Now, I’ve never been a particular fan of software related patents, just because you basically seem to be able to patent anything, be it simple or complicated. However, now I’ve got new pet peeve: user interface patents. (I try to keep this short, as I have tendency to rant…)

Patents, bad!

Patents started as a way to protect something that was basically expensive and time consuming invention to develop, and could be copied by competitors thus earning unfair edge; gaining new tech without the resources spent for actual research. In those golden ages patents were good, in fact, in many cases they were essential for upstarts and thus healthy market. The problem comes when they are applied directly to the fuzzy world of IT; they just don’t work. In fact, they start to work against the market, restricting the possibilities of upstarts and fortifying the big companies. Basically, patents have become a stick that you keep beating your competitors with, by patenting everything and all you absolutely can. *wham* *bam*

Couple of guys in University of Toronto have come up with prototype for pen (stylus) driven computers/displays. It utilizes the usually untapped resource of pen pressure as part of input system. The great thing about stylus pressure is that it’s analog input, meaning that you can have “infitine” (at least when compared to digital) amount of different levels. In the video they use it for fluid zooming, video track control and dynamic controls. I personally loved the zooming eyedrop tool. Why doesn’t my Photoshop do that?

Video in the full post, head on.

Lots of silencio lately and here come the explanations… I’ve been sick, broke my knee while snowboarding and just generally out of energy. I know, I know. I’ve been a bad blogger when not giving updates or such but I didn’t feel like writing anything pointless (like: sick, no posts today). I guess I should. I know I should.

Heads up; lots(!) of parties during next weeks (yeah, that’s plural) so depending of the hangovers, there might be some “down time” around.

Anyways, let’s get back to business.

RETYPE is a new concept for text input in touchscreen phones/devices. Instead of that huge QWERTY keyboard, which wastes massive amounts of valuable screen estate from your small screen, it relies heavily on gestures. Each key can be used to enter three letters; tap, swipe up and swipe down. It also seems that they have done some optimization regarding the letter positions, the most common letters you can simply tap, the not so common letters you have to swipe.

One potential problem with the concept though: whenever optimized letter positions come to play, the whole keyboard becomes heavily language specific. Now, of course you could optimize the layout for every language but it’s a quite big amount of work. Nevertheless, it’s a intriquing concept.

Check the video from full post

Lots of new things happening. New theme, since the previous one was horrid in usability wise, and someone would say that it is a cardinal sin on usability site. And I would agree. Some minor fine tuning done to the theme, lots of still to do.

Things are happening under the hood also. New blog is AJAX driven (thanks to AJAXed WordPress), which should make the user experience better by reducing load times; for me this was huge leap from the days without no AJAX, since I’m still a prisoner of this dreaded choppy WLAN; load times improved 50-100%. Rather nice, I would say, makes using/updating the whole thing tad more bearable. Also, if the AJAX engine works as it is supposed to be (mainly just loading the content), it should also drop some bandwith usage, since the last surge to Top 10 Usability highs of Mac OS – Debunked dropped the whole site down; one link in mac site and there we are. Next up, SuperCache?

Also lots of general tinkering here and there.

Without content, however, there is nothing. No fear there, things happening around articles too; one “random thoughts/offtopic” article (Offtopic of the day: Viruses to permanently change social networking?) is out and currently I’m writing couple of new articles about certain user interface concept (concept and example). They are out when they are done, can’t really tell about specific time since I am currently writing when I feel like it and I have lots of other things to handle anyways. All I can say that the wait won’t be too long.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned.