TouchscreenInterface
Latest
Pay no attention to that playful UI behind the Google Maps curtain (video)
Thought the page-turning Macallan was nifty? You ain't seen nothing yet -- The Astonishing Tribe (the brains behind the look of Android) aims to give you billowing, rippling cloth-like curtains of clever interactive content with their concept Velvet UI. Pull out a widget or Google Maps query, and a sheet of your desired result waves with the virtual wind, before stretching out flat for you to more comfortably interact with. Running on MeeGo (and apparently possible on Android) it's built with the company's proprietary UI framework, so don't expect it to hit tablets anytime soon unless someone throws them some bucks. Also see: TAT's other impressive concepts. Video after the break.
T9 Trace lets you Swype through your text messages
You may or may not yet be aware of the Swype virtual keyboard (comes preloaded on the Cliq XT from Motorola), but you'll definitely be hearing about the T9 Trace from Nuance. This is because, although it's fundamentally the same thing as Swype (but from a different maker), the T9 Trace is on offer from the company behind the T9 predictive text dictionary that pretty much everyone from your 7-year old nephew to your octogenarian grandpa has used. The big idea here is that you trace out the word on your virtual keyboard without lifting your finger off, with short stops at each letter you want to add being taken for input. Once you get over the seemingly unintuitive idea of abandoning those woodpecker taps for the grace of tracing, it promises to be a real fun and rapid way to input text. Nuance has bundled the whole thing with error correction, word prediction and auto-completion, while supporting 70 languages. The company has yet to tell us when the T9 Trace will be showing up on phones (touchscreens only, for obvious reasons), but you can check out video of the competing Swype implementation after the break.
PTPT touchscreen interface sounds little, could be huge (video)
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.
AMP: Front Row-like Touchscreen Interface
In preparing our recent carputer post, I came across AMP, the Front Row-like touchscreen interface Sam used for his car based Mac. Designed by author Aychamo with an extensible plugin architecture AMP already has plugins allowing you to import and access your iTunes library, movies, and photos. It even sports a mini-web browser and a war driving interface which lists detected Wireless Access Points. The interface seems to be optimized for a 800 x 480 touchscreen display which is common on the 7" LCDs that are often used in carputers. Aychamo already appears to be hard at work on version 2.0 of AMP and more information can be found on the AMP forum at MP3Car.com
