We've been working with mice and keyboards for so long, clicking on the same 'ol icons and typing in the same 'ol boxes, that it's nice to see something fresh come along -- even if it looks a little cumbersome to use. Such is PTPT, pronounced "petite petite," a concept touchscreen interface from ExB, a company that focuses on text input prediction. The input starts with three icons representing people, things, and places, and then the top bar represents time. You can, for example, long-touch on the people icon, select an individual person, and then drag them up to a specific time to get e-mails from that person. Or, you can drag that person icon down to things to see pictures of them. Or, drag the pictures "thing" up to a time to see pictures from that time, or.... well, you get the picture. There's an expository video below that will help you tie it all together, one that we'd advise watching -- if only because this probably won't be showing up on a
tablet anytime soon.
Update: JimboJones commented to let us know that those with a proclivity for touching and dragging can
sign up to be a beta tester here.
posted February 24th 2010 9:41AM
Jesus, get a tripod!
@David V
well, this is still better than those one-handed unboxing videos.
jesus is my tripod
What video? The link now goes to a never-ending Flash slideshow.
Thanks for wasting my time.
NVM. For some reason the second window didn't show up until after the page refreshed for that comment.
This is pretty interesting but I would like to see how it scales to larger sets. If I have tonnes of emails or a large group of people then how does it display these?
Also, some kind of data especially larger sets almost always tend to be more comprehensible in lists. Is there a way to see lists.
For sure, a pretty cool concept Want to see more soon.
@arnavdesai I noticed that when he was holding finger down, it was showing A B C in the ring ... not sure if you can press A for example and the ring shows the names further.
Any UI that's based on delay sucks. When the user decides to do something, he wants to do it immediately. Why in hell do I want to press something and then sit around waiting for a response? Add that up over hundreds of actions, and you've been waiting half an hour for a goddamned menu to appear.
UI design 101.
*YAWN*
Win7 multitouch is undisputably the best touch interface evarrr
@WinRulez dude did u watch the video??
You should've mentioned the android app!
If it could allow you to build up a personalized database of words that would correspond your own character of speech, that would be cool (especially slang/contractions), but I'd be hesitant to use that Android app; I'm pretty sure that ich could end up sounding like a chat bot.
It's definitely a fresh way to look at an operating system.. but it's not something people can simply pick up and use. In order for something like this to be significant, my grandma needs to know how to pick up and use it, and my grandma definitely wouldn't be able to get used to that. Neither would I for that matter.
@mynameisjay I agree with that statement, but I don't think it applies anymore. I'm 22, and I think that these advanced OS's and gestures and interactions like that are easy for my generation to pick up, and will only get easier for my kids generation, so on and so forth. My grandma doesn't need to learn how to use this stuff, because it won't matter if she can or not. But I'd be able to, and so will my kids. I think that's what's more important in determining how effective it is.
here is their home site just in case U want to be beta tester http://www.petitpetit.de/en/home.html
Good thing you saved two characters by not typing out the ponderous "you".
@Information Central thank you for valuable inputs
seems like a neat idea, but i'm not a huge fan of all the wasted space
@lolcopter Same. But It'd be awesome to develop apps in conjunction with what they have, to fill in some space.
The android app name is exb predict : http://www.androlib.com/android.application.exb-predict-ixDF.aspx
Looks tedious.
im 23 and Im keeping my mouse sorry
This is a disastrous idea
Oh... hmm... ah yes... okay........ wait wat
Anyone else think that his wife looked like a man?
I am surprised this wasn't a hotter topic on Engadget. I think this is a really innovative concept. We can already see trends in the implementation of a timeline into user interfaces with Wave.
Why can't the things/places/whatever pop up when you touch the person icon? Seems pointlessly tedious to have to drag everything all over the screen. I admit it's different, but so is guano-flavored ice cream, and neither seems to me like a good idea.